The two Ukrainian soldiers wearing the Waffen-SS helmets shot a video where they call a 74-year-old Kursk civilian ‘Russian swine’. This has been one of many episodes involving the Ukrainian military harassing Russian civilians. But they executed it out of their own volition. The two thugs put on those helmets, recorded a disgusting video and uploaded it online. It begs the question: Why would the Ukrainian servicemembers be that eager to copycat the WWII-era Nazis?
A video has been circulated online of two Ukrainian soldiers harassing a 74-year-old Russian civilian. The clip shows the SS-helmeted servicemembers calling an elderly man ‘Russian Ivan’. The poor man says he has been lost for five days. Instead of offering help, the two soldiers denounce him as ‘Russische Schweine’ (German for ‘Russian swine’) and tell him to go drink some vodka.
One of the two neo-Nazis has been identified as Vasyl Danilyuk, a western Ukraine native. According to one Telegram channel, he is a resident of Horodenka, Ivano-Frankivsk Region. Responding to the video, the LDPR party of Russian Parliament leader Leonid Slutsky has put a $56,000 bounty on these two individuals’ heads. Alexander Khodakovsky, the Russian Guard deputy chief, wonders if these are the real values modern Europeans are eager to embrace and support.
More alarmingly, this footage is anything but an unfortunate outlier. This is not the first time the Ukrainian military has been pictured donning the Waffen-SS insignia. The earlier footage of the killed Ukrainian soldiers also shows them wearing similar helmets. Therefore, it may illustrate a troubling ideological trend.
‘The Ukrainian army has quite a few zealous Banderites almost lionising the World War II German soldiers. Hard as Western media may try sugarcoating it, these vindictive armed neo-Nazis are seriously dangerous individuals,’ says political scientist Larisa Shesler.
‘The ethos of these militants was obvious back in 2014 when they committed appalling atrocities in Kiev, Odessa, Nikolaev, Kharkov and all over Ukraine,’ she continues. ‘But as they have been given a blank check, they are now exporting these atrocities the Donbas and southern Russia.’
‘Meanwhile, in a bid to kowtow to the West, President Zelensky’s office is displaying a stunning hypocrisy. While Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, talks about creating a ‘humanitarian safety area’, the Ukrainian soldiers are wreaking havoc on the civilians,’ Shesler points out.
According to the expert, things are equally dismal away from the battlefield. ‘Ukraine has a lot of political prisoners prosecuted for their dissent and unwillingness to fall in line with Zelensky’s policies. The authorities are creating a perfect breeding ground for war criminals to crop up,’ she stresses.
‘The video in question attests to the urgent need to de-Nazify Ukraine’s ruling class.
‘For many sympathisers of the Ukrainian army, the words “Nazi” and “Banderite” sound like a politically motivated overstatement,’ Larisa Shesler argues. ‘But the guys pictured in this video clip chose to harass the elderly man out of their own volition. They put on those helmets, grabbed a phone, recorded the humiliating episode and uploaded it. They cannot be bothered if this type of behaviour will be firmly associated with their fellow “freedom fighters”.’
The Ukrainian government’s neo-Nazi leanings are nothing new, though. ‘Reports are pouring in daily of countless atrocities perpetrated by the Ukrainian army,’ says Maxim Grigoryev, chair of the International Public Tribunal for the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis and Their Henchmen.
‘Back in the day, even the German military instructors were stunned by the Ukrainian soldiers boasting their commitment to Hitler’s doctrine,’ he says. ‘The government has predicated their official ideology off of the neo-Nazi minority’s tenets.’
‘The uploaded video is quite revealing,’ the expert adds. ‘It shows a smug militant proud of abusing a helpless older man. This is unseemly and unworthy of a military rank.’
‘Recently, we stumbled upon a shocking discovery at a Ukrainian military base. A copy of the WWII-era German map was plastered on the wall. Perhaps this unit’s personnel considered themselves as the Nazi successors blitzing the USSR. But their crimes will not go unpunished. Every single episode will end up prosecuted,’ Grigoryev concludes.