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US Congress starts realizing threat from Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov battalion — Russian envoy

Anatoly Antonov said that "the rampage by far-right extremism has spread beyond Ukraine"
Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov Valery Sharifulin\TASS
Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov
© Valery Sharifulin\TASS

WASHINGTON, October 24. /TASS/. The United States Congress has taken cue from US intelligence agencies and has started realizing a threat posed by Ukraine’s nationalist Azov battalion, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov has said.

"The initiative of some US legislators, who showed interest why the neo-Nazi group Azov has not been included in the list of the State Department’s terror organizations, certainly deserves attention. The rampage by far-right extremism has spread beyond Ukraine. Apparently, Congress has taken cue of US intelligence agencies and started realizing a threat posed by Azov and Americans contacting it," Antonov said, according to the Embassy's press service.

"It’s becoming more difficult to ignore this threat," Antonov noted. Earlier US legislators had asked the Department of State to include Azov in the list of terror groups.

According to the envoy, America was aware of reports that Ukraine’s authorities had rehabilitated accomplices of Nazi Germany, who were behind mass killings of civilians and Soviet prisoners of war, as well as about renaming streets in honor of criminals and building monuments, and prosecuting Orthodox priests.

Recently, Ukrainian Prime Minister Alexei Goncharuk attended a concert of a Ukrainian neo-Nazi rock band Sokyra Peruna in Kiev. "This should not be left without a reaction," Antonov emphasized. "We call on the official Washington, public and human rights organizations to finally give a proper evaluation to neo-Nazi trends in Ukraine and Baltic states," he said.

Fight against Nazism

The Russian ambassador condemned the fact that Ukrainian extremist portal Mirotvorets was still under protection of US Cloudflare service. This website contains personal information about thousands of persons, whom Ukrainian extremists deem as undesirable, including US journalists who visited Donbass. Some people, who were mentioned by this website, have been killed, he stressed.

Russia expects that the US authorities and the public will condemn any manifestations and support for far-right extremism in Ukraine, Antonov said.

The first symbolic but important step could be supporting Russia’s draft resolution to the UN General Assembly against the glorification of Nazism. "This resolution is traditionally supported by the majority of UN member-states. In the past years, only the US and Ukrainian delegations have voted against it. It’s time to tear down this "wall," which is immorally covering up the manifestations of neo-Nazism. This step could honor the "great generation" of Americans, who together with the Red Army liberated the world from fascism. We should make the entire mankind remember that it was liberated only thanks to our solidarity in the fight against the greatest evil and this is the only condition for a safe future," he stressed.