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Nazi ideology is spreading in Ukrainian army, National Guard, says ex-officer of SBU

Vasily Prozorov said that the Ukrainian forces' crimes in Donbass "largely became possible due to the widespread Nazi and fascist ideas"

Soldiers of the Ukraine's National Guard AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov

Soldiers of the Ukraine's National Guard

© AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov

MOSCOW, March 25. /TASS/. The ideology of Nazism and fascism is rapidly spreading far and wide in the Ukrainian armed forces and the National Guard, a former officer of the Ukrainian security service SBU, Vasily Prozorov, told a news conference in Moscow on Monday.

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"While speaking about the crimes committed by the Ukrainian forces in Donbass, it is impossible not to mention that they largely became possible due to widespread Nazi and fascist beliefs," Prozorov said. "I’m referring not just to the so-called voluntary battalions, where this ideology is commonplace. I saw for myself swastikas and SS insignias on their steel helmets and swastika tattoos in many other places, too. They greet each other with the Nazi salute by extending their right arm into the air. And in the barracks they keep flags with swastikas and symbols of SS divisions on the walls."

"I’m talking now about widespread Nazi notions in ordinary divisions of the Ukrainian armed forces and the National Guard operating in the field," Prozorov specified. "Remember a 95th brigade paratrooper wearing a uniform with the stripe of the SS division Totenkopf division at a meeting with President Poroshenko? Or the commander of the 503th Marines battalion keeping a picture of SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny in his office. You will agree that all this speaks for itself.

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