Bombed out: Why we keep on making war, and tolerating it

War is brand new every time it happens, and it's one of our oldest ideas. We claim to hate it, but it's part of us

By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
PUBLISHED MARCH 19, 2022

A man walks amid debris in front of a residential apartment complex that was heavily damaged by a Russian attack on March 18, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Russian forces remain on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, but their advance has stalled in recent days, even while Russian strikes - and pieces of intercepted missiles - have hit residential areas in the north of Kyiv. An estimated half of Kyiv's population has fled to other parts of the country, or abroad, since Russia invaded on February 24. 

(Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

The hardest thing I do as a writer is trying to find words to describe the indescribable. It doesn't matter what it is — beauty or bliss or sadness or tragedy or dullness or despair or horror or ecstasy or the ordinary — it's the writer's job. I remember as a young man having a dream that someday I might come up with one great idea. Just one would do it, but that was my goal. Now I realize what I've been doing for more than 50 years is excavating old ideas and finding new ways to express them.

We are witnessing one of man's very oldest ideas in Ukraine. Call it the will to power or the urge to take what is not yours or the wrath of ignorance and pride, every time war is waged it is the same. War is man's inhumanity to man on a mass scale.

Perhaps that is why we become so readily inured to images of war. We have seen them all before — the anguished, bleeding faces of the wounded, the bleakly inert limbs of the dead, the angry fire of explosions, the darkness and sameness of destruction — to borrow Hannah Arendt's term, the sheer banality of it all.
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War is brand new when it first happens, yet after only a day it is already old to us because it has been headlined on the front pages of newspapers, featured on the covers of magazines, flickered across our televisions, splashed on the big screen of movies in Technicolor, engraved in the text of great novels and first-person reports from the front. The most extraordinary scene in the 1970 movie "Patton," the one that I believe gives it staying power, comes when Gen. George S. Patton is on a bluff in North Africa or Sicily seeming to reminisce about having been at that exact spot before during ancient battles. He ends his oration by saying this about war: "I love it. God help me, I do love it so. I love it more than my life."

I don't know if Patton ever said the lines from the movie in real life, but I do know that after I took my grandmother, Sara Randolph Truscott, to see "Patton" the week it came out, I asked her what she thought, and she turned to me and answered with a little smile, "Why, it was just like being in the room with Georgie," calling him by a nickname only his family and close friends used.

Her late husband and my grandfather, Gen. Lucian K. Truscott Jr., knew Patton and served on the same cavalry posts with him between the wars. It's safe to assume she would have known what the man was like, so that's probably as good an assessment we'll ever get of the movie's essence. In Patton's rumination on war, he is saying the unsayable out loud. It makes him seem like a monster, but we are all monsters, we humans who love war, or at least tolerate it such that we keep waging it over and over and over again.

It chills the soul to think that he might be right, but here we are again, 52 years after "Patton" was released, bearing witness to yet another war being fought over the same ground, in the same cities, for largely the same reasons as the war against the Nazis that Ukraine (and Russia) fought 81 years ago. It's tempting to ask why nothing is ever new, but I'm afraid we know the answer all too well.

There is one image of war we haven't yet seen in the coverage of Russia's war against Ukraine. We've seen people sheltering in subway stations and basements and people traveling by train or by car to get to western Ukraine or Poland to escape the bombing and shelling. But we haven't seen the people left behind who don't have the wherewithal or money or even the energy to escape the cities and towns being bombed, and who end up stuck trying to survive in the ruins. I saw an interview with an expert on Ukraine this week who said that 10 percent of the population already lived below the poverty line of about $5 or $6 a day, even before the war began. It won't take long for as many as 90 percent of Ukrainians to be in the same position, he said.

I am certain that there are already people in Ukraine living in the bombed-out ruins of rural homes and urban apartment buildings with no electricity, heat, source of food or water — just existing on nothing. Because I haven't traveled to Ukraine to cover this war, and because all wars are essentially the same, I'll tell you what I saw in Afghanistan in March of 2004 in the ruins of some old apartment complexes and office buildings on the edge of Kabul.

It was like a landscape out of a near-future movie about the world after the Big Bomb, but it was real: Families had fashioned shelters out of the rubble of the buildings, using scrap wood and metal for roofs and more wood scraps and piles of rubble and cheap carpets and blankets for walls, and they were living in the midst of this horrific destruction without electricity or water and only small cooking fires for heat. Here and there, I could see pits that had been dug out of the dirt and sealed with mud walls to make bread ovens, where they could bake flatbread by slapping dough on the curved walls of the pits. But none of the ovens had fires going, because the families didn't have any flour and water to make dough.

I had stopped at a small bakery next door to the Mustafa Hotel, where I was staying in Kabul, and picked up a bag of sugar cookies that I planned on eating as snacks later in my room. I had the bag stashed in a kilim shoulder bag I was carrying, but almost immediately upon entering the ruins, I was surrounded by a crowd of starving children. Their faces were dirty from having not been washed in weeks, and many of them had open infections oozing pus on their legs and arms. They were pawing at me and chattering in Dari and my translator told me they were asking for food and water, so I took out the bag of cookies and began handing them out. It was like being set upon by a pack of wolves, their fingers were tugging and scratching at my pant legs and arms as I tried to spread the cookies evenly between the children. Within a minute or two, they were all gone and the children disappeared into gaps in the rubble and behind the thin rugs where their mothers huddled in the cold.

With my translator, I tried to talk to a few of the women to get their stories: How they had ended up in these ruins in Kabul, how long they had been there, the usual questions a reporter asks in a war. Their husbands, the fathers of the children, had all been killed in fighting between Afghan factions or by the Taliban or by U.S. soldiers, so there were no men in the ruins. My translator explained that widowed women with children were undesirable and were shunned in their villages, which was why they had traveled from distant areas looking for shelter and work and aid from NGOs in Kabul. They had noplace else to go; that's why they were living in the ruins among the detritus of war.

I went back to the ruins once more before I left Afghanistan and handed out flatbread and some bottled water this time. The scene was the same. The children clawed at me desperately. It was all I could do not to throw down the bag of bread and the water bottles and run.

When I returned to L.A. a week or so later, there was a sore on my left forefinger that wouldn't heal. I went to my GP. He examined my finger and took a swab and asked me to wait while he had it tested. A couple of hours later the test came back. It was an MRSA infection. He asked me what I had come in contact with in Afghanistan that might have caused it, and I thought immediately of the children in Kabul with their open sores and cracked lips and desperate eyes. I had touched them repeatedly while handing out cookies and bread in the ruins.

The doctor gave me a big shot of antibiotics and put me on the only pill known to knock down MRSA infections. The sore got worse for a couple of days and then began to heal. The doctor told me that if I had waited to get it treated for even a day longer, I would probably have lost my finger. If I had neglected the infection longer, I could have lost my hand.

This is one of the very old ideas about war I have excavated: After the bombs have fallen and the artillery shells have exploded and the missiles have found their targets, what is left are women and children with no money, no food, no water, living in bombed-out ruins with no place else to go. That was what happened in Afghanistan, and it happened in Sicily and Vietnam and Korea and Iraq and Aleppo and Rome and Jerusalem and Cairo and Mogadishu, and now it is happening in Ukraine. History becomes present becomes future and nothing changes. The thing that is forever is war.


LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives on the East End of Long Island and spends his time Worrying About the State of Our Nation and madly scribbling in a so-far fruitless attempt to Make Things Better. You can read his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Read more on the Ukraine war and its consequences:
Endless war is back — as the merchants of death waltz us toward Armageddon
Putin's invasion of Ukraine exposes the Fox News-QAnon feedback loop
Why I'm going to Ukraine: We deserve the truth — and that's my job

How 'shock therapy' created Russian oligarchs and paved the path for Putin

March 22, 2022
GREG ROSALSKY

NPR

PLANET MONEY

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in a meeting with Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich (on the left, in the center) in 2010.Alexei Nikolsky/AP

It's been a rough few weeks for Roman Abramovich.

The British government blocked him from entering the country and froze his assets, depriving him of a glittering collection of sports cars, his 15-bedroom mansion in central London, his penthouse overlooking the River Thames, and the Chelsea soccer club.

The European Union is also messing with his finances and banning him from traveling into its 27 member states. No more summering in Saint-Tropez or wintering in Chamonix.

In the United States, members of Congress are now calling on President Biden to sanction Abramovich, threatening his megamansion on the Upper East Side.

It's not just governments. Last week, a Pro-Ukraine activist in Spain chartered a boat and attempted to graffiti Abramovich's 458-foot superyacht, Solaris, which was docked in a Barcelona marina. Although the activist failed, Abramovich directed his two superyachts (he has another one) to head east for safety.

Abramovich, himself, has fled east for safety, back home to Russia, which seems to be one of the few nations where he's welcome these days.

All of this is a lot of unwanted publicity for a man with a reputation for shunning the spotlight. An orphan who grew up in the frozen tundra of Siberia, Abramovich rose from nothing to become a tycoon worth an estimated $13 billion. Younger than most in the first generation of Russian "oligarchs" — as the Russians would come to disparagingly call them — the boyish Abramovich became known as "the stealth oligarch" because, unlike many of his plutocratic contemporaries, he kept his head down.

In the 1990s, Abramovich became the protégé of Boris Berezovsky, who was probably the least stealthy oligarch. Berezovsky had a big mouth. In 2000, he made the mistake of openly challenging a new president by the name of Vladimir Putin, someone Berezovsky had played a big role in helping to get elected president. When Putin threw down the hammer, Berezovsky was forced to flee Russia — and Abramovich, a staunch (and tight-lipped) Putin loyalist, took over much of Berezovsky's oil and media empires. Berezovsky remained a vocal Putin critic after moving to London. He was found dead there in 2013, hanging from a noose in his bathroom. Investigators are divided on whether it was suicide or murder.

With the exception of Abramovich and a few other notables, the cast of characters comprising Russia's oligarchy has been largely replaced since the 1990s, after Putin began purging oligarchs and anointing his own oligarchs in an effort to fortify his reign. However, the power structure remains the same. It's a symbiotic relationship in which the oligarchs' economic power buttresses the political power of the Russian president, and the president's power buttresses the economic power of the oligarchs — like a medieval king getting tribute from his aristocracy in exchange for his protection. It's an arrangement that the West is now fighting to disrupt.

It's impossible to know what would have happened to Russia in an alternate universe, where the nation's transition to capitalism was handled more gradually and fairly, and the oligarchs had never taken the helm of Russia's economy. We do know, however, that their story is crucial to understanding the rise of Putin.

The Rise Of The Oligarchy

The Russian oligarchy arose out of the mayhem of rapid privatization in the 1990s. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian president Boris Yeltsin, a leader in the revolt against communism, had to figure out how to transition from a command-and-control economy to a market one. Yeltsin turned to the Russian economists Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais, who, with the aid of Western advisers, hammered out the details.

There were many economists — including even Gaidar and Chubais themselves before they became government officials — who believed that the transition to capitalism would best be handled gradually. They knew the transition would be complex and painful, and it made sense for Russia to first create the institutions that healthy, competitive markets need to flourish — like independent courts, functioning capital markets, and strong regulatory bodies.

But Yeltsin and his allies believed that time was not on their side. An attempted coup in August 1991 by Soviet hardliners against the reformers almost derailed the whole project. Entrenched Soviet industrialists and party insiders wanted a return to the old order. The Yeltsin administration decided that a program known as "shock therapy" — rapidly unleashing market forces — was the way to electrocute the old Soviet system and jolt Russia into embracing capitalism.

American advisors and global creditors, especially the International Monetary Fund, played a notable role advocating for shock therapy. But some influential shock therapists, like the economist Jeffrey Sachs, then at Harvard, believed such a radical program needed support. He proposed the United States and multilateral development agencies help Russian reformers succeed with a $30 billion aid package, akin to what America had provided Europe after WWII with the Marshall Plan. Sachs also called for the cancellation of Russia's debts. But these ideas were rejected by American leaders.

President Yeltsin delivered the first big shock to the Russian economy when he lifted price controls in December 1991. As the Soviet economy collapsed, however, the policy ended up unleashing hyperinflation. By 1994, consumer prices in Russia would skyrocket to almost 2000 times what they had been in 1990. That candy bar that had cost $1 now cost $2000. Hyperinflation devastated ordinary Russians.

Meanwhile, Chubais was tasked with overseeing mass privatization. That entailed transforming a nation whose almost entire economy consisted of state-controlled industries — manufacturing plants, oil refineries, mines, media outlets, biscuit factories, you name it — into private enterprises. It was, to date, surely the biggest transfer of state assets to private owners in world history.

Privatization was conducted in two waves. The first wave, which began in October 1992, had at least the veneer of being a fair and open process. Russia issued 148 million "privatization checks," or vouchers, to Russian citizens. These vouchers could be freely sold or traded. They could then be used to buy shares of state enterprises going private at public auctions around the nation. It was like the former Soviet Union was holding the world's largest garage sale and vouchers were the tickets to shop.

The people on their way to becoming Russia's first class of oligarchs scoured the nation, trying to buy as many vouchers as they could. Many of the oligarchs had come from nothing. They had initially gotten rich — but not quite buy-superyachts rich just yet — by hustling in the black market or through legitimate businesses when the Soviet Union first allowed private entrepreneurship in the late 1980s. For example, Roman Abramovich made his first pot of money selling rubber ducks and other random objects to Russians out of his Moscow apartment (seriously). He was also a mechanic. By the time privatization began, many soon-to-be oligarchs owned banks and had enough money to buy lots of vouchers.

The oligarchs went on a buying spree, purchasing hundreds of thousands of vouchers, each of which were worth 10,000 rubles, or about $40 or less back in the 1990s. Average Russians, who were struggling during hyperinflation, were often eager to sell. After amassing vouchers, the oligarchs — both come-up-from-nothing hustlers and former Soviet government insiders — used them at auctions to buy up stocks in newly private companies. By all accounts, many of these enterprises were shockingly undervalued — and those who were able to get large chunks of lucrative enterprises became fabulously wealthy in a very short period of time. Between 1992 and 1994, about 15,000 state-run enterprises went private under the program.

By 1994, when the voucher program ended, around 70 percent of the Russian economy had been privatized. But some of the biggest, most valuable industries remained in the government's hands. Chubais had plans to privatize these state enterprises and raise much needed funds for the government by selling them off for cash to the highest bidder in legitimate auctions. However, politics got in the way of the increasingly unpopular privatization drive — and even threatened to reverse it. That's when the Yeltsin administration resorted to a much shadier form of privatization.
The "Loans For Shares" Scheme

By 1995, Boris Yeltsin was very unpopular. Hyperinflation. The decline of law and order. The rise of the mafia and execution-style killings on the streets of Moscow. Russia's inability to pay government salaries and pensions. The sense that unscrupulous men in suits were the only ones winning in the new economy. Plus, Yeltsin was a notorious drunk with serious health problems. Just a year away from reelection, Yeltsin's approval rating fell to the low single digits, and he faced the specter of an increasingly popular Communist challenger who looked like he could win the 1996 presidential elections.

With privatization stalling, the government desperate for money, and a growing fear that Russia was about to slide back into communism, Chubais and the Yeltsin administration turned to a shady scheme known as "Loans For Shares." The secret plot basically worked like this: the richest oligarchs loaned the government billions of dollars in exchange for massive shares of Russia's most valuable state enterprises. When the government defaulted on paying back the loans, as the schemers expected they would, the oligarchs would walk away with the keys to Russia's most profitable corporations. In exchange, the government would get the money it needed to pay its bills, privatization would keep moving forward — and, most importantly, the oligarchs would do everything in their power to ensure Yeltsin was reelected.

Between November and December 1995, twelve of Russia's most profitable industrial enterprises were auctioned off to the oligarchs, including a mining company, two steel companies, two shipping companies, and five oil companies. The auctions were a complete farce. Chubais and his team had predetermined with the oligarchs who would get what and for roughly how much. And the prices the oligarchs paid for these corporations were a steal — almost literally. For example, Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, now well beyond his days of selling rubber ducks, got a large stake in the oil company Sibneft for about $200 million. In 2009, when Putin renationalized the company, Abramovich sold his stake back to the government for $11.9 billion. Talk about a payday.

"Chubais never advertised it publicly — he attempted to keep the goal obscure so as not to alarm the opposition— but loans for shares should really have been called 'tycoons for Yeltsin,'" writes David Hoffman, the former Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Post, in his book The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia. "Chubais was willing to hand over the property without competition, without openness, and, as it turned out, for a bargain price, but in a way that would keep the businessmen at Yeltsin's side in the 1996 reelection campaign."

Yeltsin Is Reelected With Oligarch Money

Holding up their end of the bargain, the oligarchs, who often fought with each other, united forces behind Yeltsin's reelection campaign. They donated millions of dollars to the effort. They hired the best political operatives they knew. They laundered government money with their banks, and fed it into the Yeltsin campaign machine. Two of the oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, controlled two of the three major Russian television networks — and they blanketed the airwaves with pro-Yeltsin propaganda. Fueled by the immense power of the oligarchs, Yeltsin conducted Russia's first American-style presidential campaign.

As the election approached, Yeltsin made a cynical move to placate critics of his privatization scheme, publicly firing his super unpopular privatization czar Chubais. "He sold off a big industry for next to nothing," Yeltsin told the press. "We cannot forgive this."

Despite waving the banner of free markets and democracy, the reformers of the 1990s — perhaps ironically — did much of their reforms undemocratically, often by presidential decrees that were hammered out through backroom deals with the rich and powerful. Thanks in no small part to the oligarchic beneficiaries of these deals, Yeltsin beat the odds and won reelection. Russian-style crony capitalism was here to stay.

Weeks after the victory, Boris Berezovsky bragged to The Financial Times that he and six other Russian oligarchs controlled half of Russia's economy. That number seems to have been significantly inflated. Nonetheless, by 1996, the world could see that Russia had a new class of industrialists and bankers who wielded enormous power. A class that made their fortunes not through society-improving ideas, consumer-pleasing products, or technological innovations — but rather through corruption, skullduggery, and the plunder of Russia's raw materials. Many Russians would come to resent the oligarchs and the liberal reformers who empowered them.

As Yeltsin's health continued to deteriorate in the late 1990s, the oligarchs began to worry about who would be his successor. The natural heir to Yeltsin would be whoever occupied the post of prime minister. If Yeltsin stepped down, the prime minister automatically became acting president and would have the advantage of incumbency during election time.

In 1999, Boris Yeltsin and his oligarchic allies agreed that an obscure former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin was the man to become Yeltsin's prime minister, and soon Russia's next president. He was a nobody, barely a public figure, but he had a reputation for loyalty. They trusted that, once in power, he would look after their interests. Little did they know that they were unleashing a monster they soon would be unable to control.

Russia TV's Paris correspondent slams 'propaganda' after quitting

Agence France-Presse
March 22, 2022

Zhanna Agalakova she could no longer be involved in the 'lies' and 'manipulation' of Russian state TV Christophe ARCHAMBAULT AFP

A Russian journalist who for years was senior foreign correspondent for state-run television on Tuesday lashed out at the propaganda broadcast by pro-Kremlin media after dramatically quitting over the invasion of Ukraine.

Zhanna Agalakova, a familiar face in Russian households from two decades work as a correspondent from postings including New York and Paris, had earlier this month announced she was leaving Pervy Kanal (Channel One) due to the invasion.

Speaking in public for the first time since she quit, Agalakova told reporters at a news conference in Paris organised by press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) that she could no longer be involved in the "lies" and "manipulation" of Russian state TV.

"I want the people of Russia to hear me and learn what propaganda is and stop being zombified," she said.

With tears in her eyes, Agalakova said she had hesitated a lot before speaking out in public but then decided "there was no other choice".

Agalakoa, who most recently worked as Paris-based Europe correspondent for Pervy Kanal, admitted that she had "made many compromises in my career" but she described the invasion of Ukraine as a "red line".

There has been intense focus on Russian TV since an editor on the Pervy Kanal barged onto the set of its flagship Vremya (Time) evening news last week, holding a poster reading "No War."

Marina Ovsyannikova was detained and a Moscow court rapidly fined her 30,000 rubles (260 euros). But despite being freed she could face further prosecution, risking years in prison under draconian new laws.

Ovsyannikova said she was quitting her job but not accepting an offer from President Emmanuel Macron of asylum in France, saying she wanted to stay in Russia.
'Huge lie'

Agalakova announced she was leaving her channel in an Instagram video posted last week, symbolically cutting a Pervy Kanal band around her wrist and saying she had already written her resignation letter on March 3.

She described a media system that "just gives the point of view of the Kremlin".

Agalakova pointed to how state television covers President Vladimir Putin with exhaustive coverage of his macho holiday activities but with no scrutiny of his private life which is an absolute taboo.

"Our news does not show the country, we do not see Russia," she said.

"We only see the first man of the country, what he ate, who he shook hands with, we even saw him shirtless. But we don't know if he's married, if he has children," she said.

She lambasted the state media for its repeated description of Russia's opponents in Ukraine as "Nazis", a term that touches a particular nerve in a country still scarred by the sacrifices of World War II.

"When, in Russia, we hear the word 'Nazi', we only have one reaction -- destroy. It's a manipulation, a huge lie."

Justifying her long career as correspondent in New York and Paris, she said: "I thought that by reporting on life in Europe -- and in particular in Paris -- I could avoid being propagandistic."

"I didn't lie, every fact was real. But take real facts, mix them up and you'll end up with a big lie," she said.

'Hostages of situation'

Press freedom activists outside Russia accuse its state television of painting a severely distorted picture of the war in a bid to maintain support for what the Kremlin calls a "special military operation."

Russian lawmakers on Tuesday approved legislation imposing jail terms of up to three years for the publication of false information about Russia's actions abroad.

Agalakova is not the only prominent Russian TV journalist to have quit over the invasion of Ukraine, but so far there has been no mass exodus.

NTV channel news anchor Lilya Gildeeva, who has worked for the channel now owned by energy giant Gazprom, since 2006, said she had left Russia and resigned from her job.

The longstanding Brussels correspondent of NTV, Vadim Glukser, has also said he had handed in his notice.

"Many journalists, producers or people who work in the media think like me," Agalakova said.

"It's easy to accuse them, to ask why they don't resign, don't protest. But those who stay have families, elderly parents, children, houses to pay for. They are hostages of the situation."

© 2022 AFP

Franklin Graham, Russia and the ‘Moralist International’

The war in Ukraine has made strange bedfellows of the international religious right.

Franklin Graham, right, meets with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on March 5, 2019. Photo courtesy of the Moscow Patriarchate

March 21, 2022

By 

Mark Silk

(RNS) — Four days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Franklin Graham tweeted, “Pray for  President (Vladimir) Putin today. This may sound like a strange request, but we need to pray that God would work in his heart so that war could be avoided at all cost.”

I think we can mark that prayer down as unanswered. The Holy One’s response, assuming there was one, seems to have been more along the lines of what happened when Moses put the pinch on Pharoah to let the Hebrews go free. According to the Book of Exodus: “And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh.” 

Since Putin’s heart to date shows no sign of softening — last week he likened his opponents to a plague of gnats — Graham might assume the righteous prophet’s voice. As he did in 2015, for example, when he railed that then-President Barack Obama “has stood defiantly against God. And against his teaching. And the teachings of the Scriptures.”

I’ll go out on a limb and say that to invade a country without provocation and promiscuously kill its civilians is to stand against Graham’s God and Scriptures.

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RELATED: Samaritan’s Purse, Israelis will treat wounded Ukrainians in Lviv field hospitals

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To his credit, Graham has committed Samaritan’s Purse, the relief organization he heads, to providing relief to the victims of Russian war-making. But as for his issuing a prophetic denunciation of Russia, I’m not holding my breath. It would mean disavowing an alliance he has been involved in for years. 

That alliance is the subject of “The Moralist International: Russia in the Global Culture Wars,” a book by University of Innsbrück sociologist Kristina Stoeckl and Russian scholar Dmitry Uzlaner, forthcoming this fall from Fordham University Press. Stoeckl and Uzlaner show in fascinating detail how the Russian Orthodox Church turned itself into a leading promoter of “traditional family values” inside Russia and on the world stage as part of a “Moralist International” led by the American religious right.

Central to the story is Kirill, the current patriarch of Moscow, who, after the fall of the Soviet Union, seized on family values as a means by which his church could restore its traditional place in Russian society and realize an age-old ambition to supplant Constantinople as the “Third Rome” — the headquarters of Eastern Orthodoxy, if not of world Christendom.

In 2000, then-Metropolitan Kirill wrote a widely read article explaining how Russian Orthodoxy could become a public religion capable of “defining the future face of human civilization.” That meant not only standing against the morally corrupt values of secular liberalism but breaking out of a narrow Orthodox shell that eschewed alliances with conservatives in other faith communities.

Although culture warfare is alien to the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Kirill succeeded in having the Russian church embrace it after becoming Moscow patriarch in 2009. Thus, under his leadership Russians began to play an important part in the World Congress of Families, an American organization designed to spread a Christian-right agenda internationally. 

Franklin Graham tweets a photo of meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in April 2017.

It was after Putin was elected president of Russia for the third time in 2012 that he himself signed on to Kirill’s agenda, signing laws that established penalties for offending religious feelings and for displaying LGBT symbols. Putin’s goal of reestablishing the Russian empire dovetailed perfectly with Kirill’s messianic ambition for his church.

Along the way, Graham has been there to facilitate the cause, meeting with Putin in 2015 and with Kirill in 2019, tweeting after the latter encounter, “I’ve been in Moscow this week & had the privilege of meeting w/Patriarch Kirill of Moscow & All Russia. It was also a blessing to meet w/evangelical leaders & other officials while there. Pray for them & for more opportunities to share the truth, hope, & life found only in Jesus.”

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RELATED: How Putin’s invasion became a holy war for Russia

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It seems obvious that, however the war in Ukraine turns out, Putin will have turned himself into an international pariah. The same is likely true for Kirill, who has thus far served as the war’s foremost religious apologist.

At a conference hosted by Fordham’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center last week, Stoeckl said she expected that, because of the war, the Russians would be dropping out of the global family values movement — the Moralist International. “They were on the rise to become the leading moral voice,” she said.

As for Franklin Graham, who knows?

'Best enemies list since Nixon': Author basks in pride after Ted Cruz attacks his book during confirmation hearing

Brad Reed
March 22, 2022


During his questioning of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz tried to get her on the record about several books that were on the recommended reading list at the Georgetown Day School, where Jackson serves as a member of the board of trustees.

In addition to attacking the school for recommending the "Anti-Racist Baby" book, Cruz also singled out a book called "The End of Policing," a book that argues for reducing the amount of policing Americans are subjected to by decriminalizing drugs and sex work, among other things.

The book's author, Alex Vitale, found himself surprised and honored to have his book held up by Cruz during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

NOW WATCH: 'Awkward’ Lindsey Graham has now become the ‘drama guy’ at confirmation hearings: former Dem senator

"So that just happened," a surprised Vitale wrote on Twitter after Cruz slammed his work.

Vitale went on to add that being called out by Cruz was akin to being on "the best enemies list since Nixon" and said Cruz's tirade against the book was "the best endorsement yet for The End of Policing."

 Utah's GOP governor explains why he vetoed anti-trans bill: 'Rarely has so much fear been directed at so few'

Bob Brigham
March 22, 2022

Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox (Source: Twitter)

Utah's Republican governor on Tuesday urged those who disagreed with him to read why he vetoed an anti-transgender bill.

"Utah Gov. Spencer Cox vetoed a ban on transgender students playing girls' sports on Tuesday, becoming the second Republican governor this week to overrule state lawmakers taking on youth sports amid broader culture wars as LGBTQ visibility grows," the Associated Press reported Tuesday. "Cox joins Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, who vetoed a statewide ban on Monday. Holcomb said Indiana's Legislature had not demonstrated that transgender kids had undermined fairness in sports."

On social media, Cox posted a screenshot of his three-page veto message.

"I know most won’t read past a headline but please read my veto letter—especially if you disagree with me. The veto will be overridden on Friday and then we will have a special session to fix a few things. Trans sports is a terribly difficult issue. Please be kind to everyone," he urged.

Cox addressed his explanatory letter to Utah state Senate President Stuart Adams and Speaker Brad Wilson.

"I believe in fairness and protecting the integrity of women’s sports. I know both of you are committed to these same ideals and that we have worked very hard together to resolve the many issues surrounding transgender student participation in sports. Unfortunately, HB11 has several fundamental flaws and should be reconsidered," Cox wrote.

Cox warned the bill could bankrupt the Utah High School Athletic Association (UHSAA) and cited the five numbers that "most impacted" his veto.

"75,000 high school kids participating in high school sports in Utah. 4 transgender kids playing high school sports in Utah. 1 transgender student playing girls sports," he wrote. "86% of trans youth reporting suicidality. 56% of trans youth having attempted suicide."

"Four kids and only one of them playing girls sports. That’s what all of this is about. Four kids who aren’t dominating or winning trophies or taking scholarships. Four kids who are just trying to find some friends and feel like they are a part of something. Four kids trying to get through each day. Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few," he wrote. "I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live. And all the research shows that even a little acceptance and connection can reduce suicidality significantly. For that reason, as much as any other, I have taken this action in the hope that we can continue to work together and find a better way."

Nepal artist breathes life into sacred painting tradition

Agence France-Presse
March 24, 2022

Paubha remains a common painting method in Nepal but the austere religious observances once followed by its artists have fallen out of practice 

PRAKASH MATHEMA AFP

With a shaved head and an empty stomach, artist Ujay Bajracharya dips his brush to line the eyes of the deity Tara as a soothing Buddhist hymn warbles in the background.

The 40-year-old is applying the final strokes to his paubha painting, a devotional art form known for its minute detail, intense colours and the strict purification rituals traditionally required of its practitioners.

It took three months for Bajracharya to complete his rendition of the Green Tara, a goddess of compassion revered by Buddhists and Hindus in Nepal.

Before work began, he shaved off his hair and clipped his nails, while a Buddhist priest blessed his canvas and selected a day auspicious enough for the artist to commence his labors.

Bajracharya woke up early each morning and did not eat until his day's work was over, adopting a strict vegetarian diet that also excluded garlic, tomatoes and onion when he broke his fast.

"My body felt light and I felt more focused and motivated to paint," he told AFP.

"Changing my lifestyle was a bit difficult at first but I had the support of my family and friends, so that helped me stay disciplined."

Paubha remains a common painting method in Nepal but the austere religious observances once followed by its artists have fallen out of practice.

Bajracharya's adoption of these rituals began last year, when he approached a museum in the capital Kathmandu about painting another Buddhist deity while adhering to the forgotten traditions.

Rajan Shakya, founder of the Museum of Nepali Art, said that they immediately agreed to the idea of reviving the practice.

"It is part of what makes paubha art unique and valuable. The more people learn about it, the more demand there will be for Nepali artists. And then we know our art will survive, our culture will survive," Shakya said.

Bajracharya has committed to observing these rules for future paintings, beginning with his exacting work on the Green Tara, which he crafted for worship in a private prayer room at his home.

"I felt that we should preserve this method and the next generation should also be aware -- people should know about the spiritual aspect of these paintings," he said.

Paubha artworks use cotton or silk canvases, and colors were traditionally made by grinding minerals and plants into fine powder. Some works even used pure gold and silver.

The oldest preserved paubha painting dates to the 13th century, but scholars believe the tradition is much older, with earlier examples likely disappearing because of the fragile materials used.

Its artists are believed to have inspired trends in thangkas, a similar type of devotional painting in neighboring Tibet that has been recognised in UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage.

'A form of meditation'

Priest Dipak Bajracharya -- a member of Ujay's caste but of no relation to the painter -- said that in earlier times paubha artists would stay "pure" to ensure the sanctity of the images they produced.

"The process itself is considered a form of meditation," he said.

While the traditional religious value remains, paubha paintings are now commonly seen as decorative hangings in museums or the homes of collectors.

A growing international appreciation for the craft has proven lucrative for artists, with interested buyers in China, Japan and Western countries.

"Paubha paintings have now become a business, but their aim is not commercial -- they are actually objects of respect and worship," said the priest.


Dipak returned to Ujay's home once the latter's hair had grown back for a final religious ceremony, culminating in a ritual to "breathe life" into the finished painting.

The ceremonial practice invites the Green Tara to reside in the work as a vessel for worship.

"This is not art alone, the faith of Buddhists and Hindus is tied to it," said Ujay Bajracharya.


"If we don't preserve this art form, the faith will also slowly fade away."

© 2022 AFP

Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court hearing is a flashback to how race and crime featured during Thurgood Marshall’s 1967 hearings

The Conversation
March 24, 2022

Thurgood Marshall (Yoichi Okamoto/National Archives and Records Administration)

U.S. Sen. James Eastland posed a question to U.S. Supreme Court nominee Thurgood Marshall during his August 1967 confirmation hearings.

“Are you prejudiced against white people in the South?”

Eastland, a known white supremacist, could not be clearer in conveying his fears about Marshall and race.

Fifty-five years after Marshall’s hearings, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked a similar question of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson on March 22, 2022, during Jackson’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings.

“You have praised the 1619 Project, which argues the U.S. is a fundamentally racist country, and you have made clear that you believe judges must consider critical race theory when deciding how to sentence criminal defendants,” Blackburn said. “Is it your personal hidden agenda to incorporate critical race theory into the legal system?”

Blackburn’s questions, when fact-checked, proved to be as inaccurate as they were inflammatory

However, Blackburn – and other Republican senators – injected race-baiting into Jackson’s confirmation hearings.

President Joe Biden nominated Jackson, 51, on Feb. 25, 2022, to fill Justice Stephen Breyer’s seat, shortly after Breyer announced his retirement plans. Biden had publicly promised during his 2020 presidential campaign to nominate a Black woman to the high court.

Jackson’s confirmation hearings are scheduled to end on March 24. The entire Senate, which is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, is expected to confirm Jackson after the proceedings, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaking vote. It’s also possible some Republicans could vote in Jackson’s favor.

As a constitutional law professor who focuses on the Supreme Court, I find it striking that race has surfaced in such a major way in these hearings, more than five decades after Marshall’s nomination. In some respects, there has been progress on racial equity in the U.S., but aspects of these hearings demonstrate that too much remains the same.


Justice Thurgood Marshall, left, talks with former President Lyndon Baines Johnson following Marshall’s appointment to the Supreme Court in August 1967.
Keystone/Getty Images

Some common ground

Marshall was the first African American man who served on the Supreme Court. If confirmed, Jackson will be the first African American woman on the court.

The full Senate’s final vote on Marshall reflected divisions based on racial desegregation and Marshall’s past as an NAACP lawyer, rather than a straight partisan split. President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, nominated Marshall.

But most Southern Democrats voted against him. Sixty-nine senators – 37 Democrats and 32 Republicans – voted to confirm Marshall. Eleven senators – 10 Democrats and one Republican – voted not to confirm, and 20 senators – 17 Democrats and three Republicans – dodged their senatorial voting responsibilities entirely and were recorded as “not voting.”

Widespread predictions of a final Senate vote along party lines bode well for Jackson.

Jackson is now a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Breyer and other legal experts have routinely praised Jackson’s intellect and legal experience. Jackson has also worked as a federal trial court judge, vice chair and commissioner on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, private law firm lawyer and federal public defender. She also served as a judicial clerk for Breyer.

The American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary unanimously rated Jackson “well qualified,” its highest ranking.

Twenty-seven Republican senators have also previously voted to confirm Jackson for her federal court positions.

But Jackson has faced arduous and sometimes histrionic cross-examination during her hearing. Certainly, partisan hostility and political theater have marked every Supreme Court nomination for decades.

Jackson’s hearings, however, stand out. They have been drenched in questions about race, both obviously and not so obviously, most caustically from Sens. Blackburn, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and John Cornyn.

On March 22, Cruz questioned Jackson about the teaching of critical race theory at Georgetown Day School, a private school where she serves on the board of trustees.

Jackson, like Marshall, fielded the charged questions in a straightforward manner.

“Senator, those ideas, they don’t come up in my work as a judge, which, respectfully, is what I’m here to discuss,” Jackson said.


Sen. Ted Cruz questioned U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on critical race theory during her March 22 confirmation hearing.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

A preoccupation with crime

In addition to the explicit interrogations of Jackson’s views on race, her hearings – like Marshall’s – have featured a preoccupation with the nominee’s views on crime.

Republican senators have repeatedly accused Jackson of being soft on crime – specifically, that she was lenient as a trial judge in sentencing child pornographers.

Fearmongering about crime often carries a racialized connotation, whether blatant or unspoken. Media distortions and carceral inequities fuel the myth that Black and brown men are presumptively criminal.

Jackson’s actual sentencing record reveals no anomalies or disproportionate leniency when compared with that of other judges nominated by both Republican and Democratic presidents.

But Jackson’s hearing was a flashback to Marshall’s August 1967 confirmation hearing, when Sen. John McClellan questioned Marshall and suggested that he did not take crime seriously.

“First, I would ask you if you do not agree with me that the mounting incidence of crime in this country has reached a critical stage,” McClellan said. “How do you plan to deal with it? … Do you think it is reaching proportions where we will have a reign of lawlessness and chaos?”

Marshall answered the questions politely, never hinting at the offensiveness of the implication that he somehow supported crime and lawlessness.
Republicans’ treatment of Jackson

Republicans now sitting on the Senate Judiciary Committee have conflated legal representation of criminal defendants with a disregard for the rule of law and public safety.

Republican Sens. Blackburn, Lindsey Graham, Cruz, Hawley, Tom Cotton and Cornyn have gone far beyond insinuation to outright vilification of Jackson’s legal representation of criminal defendants.

Blackburn incorrectly said on March 21 that Jackson “consistently called for greater freedom for hardened criminals.”

[You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter.]

Cornyn incorrectly accused Jackson of using the phrase “war criminal” to describe former President George W. Bush and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during the course of her legal work for Guantanamo detainees.

Cotton incorrectly said she “twisted the law” as a judge in applying the law of compassionate release, in which inmates can be released if they are very sick or elderly, for example. Cotton also suggested that she was “sympathetic” to a “fentanyl drug kingpin.”


U.S. Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies during her confirmation hearings on March 23, 2022.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Transformative change is slow

Like the Dixiecrat senators – Democratic senators from the South who believed in white supremacy – who grilled Marshall about his views on crime, the present-day Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans have repeatedly insinuated that Jackson is soft on crime for performing her job responsibilities as a defense lawyer and trial judge in a manner that has been shown to be well within the mainstream of these legal roles.

This racialized fearmongering brings to mind the divisive political tactics of the Willie Horton advertisement during the 1988 presidential campaign. That advertisement linked crime with African American men, and then linked both to Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, who eventually lost the race to Republican George H.W. Bush.

Marshall’s confirmation was a giant step forward in Supreme Court and U.S. history, but along the way he faced Senate Judiciary Committee questions that were race-baiting, arrogant, irrelevant and picayune.

Jackson’s historic hearings have unfolded in a similar way. In all likelihood, Jackson will become the next justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, representing another momentous step forward for this country. But it is also another reminder that transformative change on race, while continuing to progress, happens slowly in the U.S.

Margaret M. Russell, Associate Professor of Law, Santa Clara University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

RIGHT TO LIFE HYPOCRITES
Right-wingers are absolutely gushing over South Carolina firing squad executions

Rod Graham
March 24, 2022

A firing squad (Shutterstock)




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A recent press release from the South Carolina Department of Corrections tells us that “the department is now able to carry out an execution by firing squad.”

It is worth reading the execution protocol:

Three firing squad members will be behind the wall, with rifles facing the inmate through the opening. The rifles and open portal will not be visible from the witness room. All three rifles will be loaded with live ammunition...The inmate will wear a prison-issued uniform and be escorted into the chamber. The inmate will be given the opportunity to make a last statement. The inmate will be strapped into the chair, and a hood will be placed over his head. A small aim point will be placed over his heart by a member of the execution team. After the warden reads the execution order, the team will fire.

What’s next? Is the state going to permit tar-and-feathering of convicted criminals? Sew scarlet letters on the shirts of adulterers?

South Carolina is now the fourth state to legalize firing squads, along with three other red states Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah.

A nation against the death penalty

The thing most striking to me is not necessarily that the South Carolina legislature authorized death by firing squad, but that this embrace of barbarism is so at odds with the national zeitgeist.

According to Gallup, support for the death penalty is at a five-decade low. One could argue that, at 54 percent, a majority still favors it as punishment for murder. But when Americans are asked if they could choose between life imprisonment with no choice for parole and the death penalty, 60 percent favor life imprisonment.

This is the first time since the 1980s, when polls first asked the question, that Americans have favored life imprisonment over death.

Public opinion is clearly trending away from capital punishment. The number of people put to death has decreased over the years.

According to a brief from the Death Penalty Information Center: “2021 saw historic lows in executions and near historic lows in new death sentences. … Eighteen people were sentenced to death, tying 2020’s number for the fewest in the modern era of the death penalty.”

In 1999, 99 people were executed.

In 2020, 11 were.

Much of the decrease is because states have abolished it or because states are more narrowly defining crimes punishable by death.

We are more aware of the flaws in our legal system.

The racial bias in death penalty sentencing is well documented. Indeed, Washington abolished the death penalty in 2018 in part due to the racial bias in capital sentencing within that state.

We know the state often gets it wrong, too.

The Netflix docuseries The Innocence Files revealed in excruciating detail how our system so often gets it wrong. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, an average of about four wrongly convicted people on death row have been exonerated since 1973.

It is unconscionable for people to be put to death wrongly.

The public is now so anti-death penalty that many pharmaceutical companies no longer provide the drugs used for lethal injection.

GOYA

Conservatives and the death penalty

That brings us back to South Carolina.

South Carolina has 37 people on death row to be executed because the drugs used for lethal injection have become difficult to obtain.

The legislature wants so badly to kill these people, they have reinstated a practice that belongs in the 19th century.

Why is South Carolina moving towards barbarism when it seems so much of this country is trending away from it?

The answer is simple. You probably know what it is.

South Carolina is dominated by conservative policies. According to Gallup, 77 percent of Republicans favor the death penalty. Seventy percent of “conservatives” say they support the death penalty.

The national anti-death penalty trend has not reached the south. No southern state until Virginia last year had abolished the punishment.

One could argue that Virginia is a southern state historically and geographically, but its politics are purple and oftentimes blue.

Indeed, the death penalty was abolished during Democratic Governor Ralph Northam’s administration. I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets reinstated under the current Republican governor.

Allowing the state to kill people (who we hope are actually guilty) is unconscionable and it surprises me this gets so little attention.

Canada has no death penalty. Australia has no death penalty. The United Kingdom has no death penalty. Indeed, no European country has the death penalty except Belarus.

Even Russia has a moratorium on the death penalty and hasn’t executed someone since the 1990s.

We are the only country in the Americas to carry out executions.

To be fair, the number of executions in the United States is far lower than the big five of China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Egypt.

But that’s nothing to be proud of.

So much of what is problematic about our country can be traced back to conservative ideologies that should no longer have relevance to an open, modern, post-industrial and democratic society.

Executions, now by firing squad, is a prime example.

Rod Graham is a sociologist. A professor at Virginia's Old Dominion University, he researches and teaches courses in the areas of cyber-crime and racial inequality. His work can be found at roderickgraham.com. Follow him @roderickgraham.

Azov Regiment takes centre stage in Ukraine propaganda war


By AFP
Published March 25, 2022

Ukraine's Azov Regiment was created in 2014 by far-right activists, but it has since been integrated into the National Guard - Copyright AFP Vano SHLAMOV

Some call them war heroes, others neo-Nazis: Ukraine’s Azov Regiment is at the heart of the propaganda war between Kyiv and Moscow, as Russia claims to seek the “denazification” of Ukraine.

The Azov Special Operations Detachment, previously known as the “Azov Battalion” but now called the “Azov Regiment”, is often targeted in pro-Russian social media posts, including by Russian embassies in Paris, London and elsewhere.

The regiment is currently entrenched in the southern port city of Mariupol that has been the scene of some of the war’s heaviest fighting.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov used their presence to justify the bombing of a maternity ward there, saying the Azov regiment “and other radicals” were hiding in the building.

The regiment, created in 2014 by far-right activists, was first deployed against pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

It has since been integrated into the National Guard, under interior ministry command.

Its founders included Andriy Biletsky, a former member of the Patriot of Ukraine paramilitary organisation.

As first mostly volunteers, the battalion’s members wore insignia, such as the so-called “Wolfsangel” (wolf’s hook), that were reminiscent of symbols used by SS units in Nazi Germany.

– ‘De-ideologised’ –

“In 2014 this battalion had indeed a far-right background, these were far-right racists that founded the battalion,” said Andreas Umland at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies.

But it had since become “de-ideologised” and a regular fighting unit, he told AFP.

Its recruits now join not because of ideology but because “it has the reputation of being a particularly tough fighting unit,” Umland said.

The Azov battalion, named after the Sea of Azov to Ukraine’s south, became famous for winning back Mariupol from Russian-backed separatists in 2014.

Eight years later, it is again fighting for the city that Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes will give him his first major victory in the Ukraine campaign.

Beating the Azov Regiment could also help him justify the “denazification” claims prominent in Russian propaganda, which also labels Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, as leading a “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis”.

Such attacks try to build on Russia’s collective World War II memory of what it calls the Great Patriotic War, and thus whip up nationalist support for the invasion, experts say.

– ‘Absolute evil’ –

“The terms ‘nazism’ and ‘fascism’ evoke, in the Russian context, absolute evil that you cannot bargain with,” said Sergei Fediunin, a political scientist at France’s National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilisations.

“The only option is to fight and destroy it.”

Russian propaganda also targets the Ukrainian nationalists who fought Soviet Russia after 1945 and their leader, Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with Nazi Germany.

The Azov Regiment, meanwhile, has joined the propaganda war, publishing victory statements on the Telegram messaging service that are often accompanied by videos of burning Russian tanks, and calling the Russians “the real fascists”.

The Azov now function like other regiments “but with better PR,” said Vyacheslav Likhachev, a research analyst at the ZMINA Centre for Human Rights in Kyiv.

Their stellar reputation attracts plenty of potential recruits, “so they can choose the better ones”, he told AFP.

The unit, numbering 2,000 to 3,000 troops, has kept the same wolf-hook insignia, but Umland said in Ukraine there was little confusion about its links to the past.

“It doesn’t have the connotation of being a sort of fascist symbol anymore,” he said.

Overall, ultra-nationalist political forces have been on the decline in Ukraine since 2014, said Anna Colin Lebedev at France’s Paris Nanterre University.

“One of the reasons is that soft nationalism has now become mainstream since the Russian attack,” she said on Twitter.

Azov’s former commanders, including Biletsky, entered politics after 2014 but their far-right platform never attracted more than two percent of voters.

But since Russia’s invasion some of them have taken up arms again, with the Azov Regiment or other units.

Biletsky, meanwhile, has returned to Mariupol from where he runs an active Telegram account.

Azov fighters are Ukraine's greatest weapon and may be its greatest threat

The battalion's far-right volunteers' desire to 'bring the fight to Kiev' is a danger to post-conflict stability

An Azov battalion soldier stands next to an armoured personnel carrier at a checkpoint in Mariupol on 4 September. 

Photograph: Vasily Fedosenko/REUTERS

This article is more than 7 years old

Shaun Walker in Mariupol

THE GUARDIAN
Wed 10 Sep 2014 

"I have nothing against Russian nationalists, or a great Russia," said Dmitry, as we sped through the dark Mariupol night in a pickup truck, a machine gunner positioned in the back. "But Putin's not even a Russian. Putin's a Jew."

Dmitry – which he said is not his real name – is a native of east Ukraine and a member of the Azov battalion, a volunteer grouping that has been doing much of the frontline fighting in Ukraine's war with pro-Russia separatists. The Azov, one of many volunteer brigades to fight alongside the Ukrainian army in the east of the country, has developed a reputation for fearlessness in battle.

But there is an increasing worry that while the Azov and other volunteer battalions might be Ukraine's most potent and reliable force on the battlefield against the separatists, they also pose the most serious threat to the Ukrainian government, and perhaps even the state, when the conflict in the east is over. The Azov causes particular concern due to the far right, even neo-Nazi, leanings of many of its members.

Dmitry claimed not to be a Nazi, but waxed lyrical about Adolf Hitler as a military leader, and believes the Holocaust never happened. Not everyone in the Azov battalion thinks like Dmitry, but after speaking with dozens of its fighters and embedding on several missions during the past week in and around the strategic port city of Mariupol, the Guardian found many of them to have disturbing political views, and almost all to be intent on "bringing the fight to Kiev" when the war in the east is over.

The battalion's symbol is reminiscent of the Nazi Wolfsangel, though the battalion claims it is in fact meant to be the letters N and I crossed over each other, standing for "national idea". Many of its members have links with neo-Nazi groups, and even those who laughed off the idea that they are neo-Nazis did not give the most convincing denials.

"Of course not, it's all made up, there are just a lot of people who are interested in Nordic mythology," said one fighter when asked if there were neo-Nazis in the battalion. When asked what his own political views were, however, he said "national socialist". As for the swastika tattoos on at least one man seen at the Azov base, "the swastika has nothing to do with the Nazis, it was an ancient sun symbol," he claimed.

The battalion has drawn far-right volunteers from abroad, such as Mikael Skillt, a 37-year-old Swede, trained as a sniper in the Swedish army, who described himself as an "ethnic nationalist" and fights on the front line with the battalion.

Despite the presence of these elements, Russian propaganda that claims Kiev's "fascist junta" wants to cleanse east Ukraine of Russian speakers is overblown. The Azov are a minority among the Ukrainian forces, and even they, however unpleasant their views may be, are not anti-Russian; in fact the lingua franca of the battalion is Russian, and most have Russian as their first language.

Indeed, much of what Azov members say about race and nationalism is strikingly similar to the views of the more radical Russian nationalists fighting with the separatist side.

 The battalion even has a Russian volunteer, a 30-year-old from St Petersburg who refused to give his name. He said he views many of the Russian rebel commanders positively, especially Igor Strelkov, a former FSB officer who has a passion for military re-enactments and appears to see himself as a tsarist officer. He "wants to resurrect a great Russia, said the volunteer; but Strelkov is "only a pawn in Putin's game," he said, and he hoped that Russia would some time have a "nationalist, violent Maidan" of its own.

On one afternoon earlier this week the Guardian travelled with a group of Azov fighters to hand over several boxes of bullets to Ukrainian border guards. During an artillery attack outside Mariupol in the days before, the border guards had come to the rescue of a group of Azov fighters, and the bullets were their way of saying thank you. "Everything in this war is based on personal links; Kiev does nothing," explained the Azov's Russian volunteer, as we sped towards a checkpoint in a civilian Chevrolet; the boot full with the boxes of bullets and rocket-propelled grenade launchers; one of the windows shot out by gunfire during a recent battle.

"This is how it works. You go to some hot spot, they see you're really brave, you exchange phone numbers, and next time you can call in a favour. If you need an artillery strike you can call a general and it will take three hours and you'll be dead. Or you can call the captain or major commanding the artillery battalion and they will help you out straight away. We are Azov and they know that if they ever needed it, we would be there for them."

For the commanders and the generals in Kiev, who many in Azov and other volunteer battalions see as responsible for the awful losses the Ukrainian army has suffered in recent weeks, especially in the ill-fated retreat from Ilovaysk, there was only contempt. "Generals like those in charge of Ilovaysk should be imprisoned for treason," said Skillt. "Heads are going to roll for sure, I think there will be a battle for power."

The Ukrainian armed forces are "an army of lions led by a sheep", said Dmitry, and there is only so long that dynamic can continue. With so many armed, battle-hardened and angry young men coming back from the front, there is a danger that the rolling of heads could be more than a metaphor. Dmitry said he believes that Ukraine needs "a strong dictator to come to power who could shed plenty of blood but unite the nation in the process".

Many in the Azov battalion with whom the Guardian spoke shared this view, which is a long way from the drive for European ideals and democracy that drove the protests in Kiev at the beginning. The Russian volunteer fighting with the Azov said he believes Ukraine needs "a junta that will restrict civil rights for a while but help bring order and unite the country". This disciplinarian streak was visible in the battalion. Drinking is strictly forbidden. "One time there was a guy who got drunk, but the commander beat him in his face and legs until he could not move; then he was kicked out," recalled one fighter proudly.

Other volunteer battalions have also come under the spotlight. This week, Amnesty International called on the Ukrainian government to investigate rights abuses and possible executions by the Aidar, another battalion.

"The failure to stop abuses and possible war crimes by volunteer battalions risks significantly aggravating tensions in the east of the country and undermining the proclaimed intentions of the new Ukrainian authorities to strengthen and uphold the rule of law more broadly," said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International secretary general, in Kiev.

Fighters from the battalion told the Guardian last month they expected a "new revolution" in Ukraine that would bring a more decisive military leader to power, in sentiments similar to those of many Azov fighters.

Despite the desire of many in the Azov to bring violence to Kiev when the war in the east is over, the battalion receives funding and assistance from the governor of Donetsk region, the oligarch Serhiy Taruta. An aide to Taruta, Alex Kovzhun, said the political views of individual members of Azov were not an issue, and denied that the battalion's symbol had Nazi undertones.

"The views of some of them is their own affair as long as they do not break the law," said Kovzhun in written answers to questions. "And the symbol is not Nazi. Trust me – some of my family died in concentration camps, so I have a well-developed nose for Nazi shit."

As well as their frontline duties, the Azov battalion also functions as "a kind of police unit", said a platoon commander who goes by the nom de guerre Kirt. A medieval history buff who takes part in Viking battle reenactments and once ran a tour firm in Thailand, Kirt returned to east Ukraine to join the Azov. He took the Guardian on an overnight patrol through the outskirts of Mariupol and the villages around the front line.

Part separatist hunters, part city cops with no rules to restrain them, they travelled in a convoy of three vehicles, all heavily armed. As midnight approached we set off across the bumpy tarmac roads to the outskirts of Mariupol, and soon came across a parked car by the side of the road that the men found suspicious.

Fighters dashed from the front two cars and rushed at the vehicle pointing their guns at it. A startled man got out of the passenger seat, then a sheepish looking woman in a cocktail dress and holding a half-smoked cigarette emerged, smoothing her hair. The Azov fighters apologised, but only after demanding documents and thoroughly searching the car.

As we edged closer to the front line, Kirt and the others scanned the skyline with binoculars, on the lookout for snipers and separatists. Later, fighters sprinted towards a suspicious jeep parked on the beach while the sea was scanned for hostile support vessels, but it turned out that again the men had stumbled upon people just trying to have a good time: a group of women drinking sparkling wine out of plastic cups on the beachfront.

The Azov have been partially brought into the military and officially function as a special police unit. There are discussions that Azov and other battalions could be integrated into the army or special forces when the conflict is over.

Some of them, however, are hoping Ukraine will look very different in the not-so-distant future. And while they may be a tiny minority when it comes to Ukraine as a whole, they have a lot of weapons.

President Petro Poroshenko will be killed in a matter of months, Dmitry said, and a dictator will come to power.

"What are the police going to do? They could not do anything against the peaceful protesters on Maidan; they are hardly going to withstand armed fighting units."