“Everyone’s a Little Problematic in Ukraine’s International Legion”

by Lindsey Snell and Cory Popp

“Benjamin Velcro” is former US serviceman and volunteer with the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, the official unit of foreign volunteers under the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In early August, Russian media widely shared voice recordings in which Velcro recounted the torture and murder of a Russian prisoner of war.

“Everyone’s a Little Problematic in Ukraine’s International Legion”

Related:

An exit interview: Benjamin Velcro

I am quite good with languages, one could describe my Russian as a solid B1 (someone said B2 before but that was an ego stroke lol) I would rather understand the language of my enemy than Ukrainian. My convictions against the putin regime were largely solidified when I was part of a task force related to Georgia just prior to their invasion with the US Army. In 2014, maiden inspired me. In 2020, August, I thought the similar conditions could be met in Belarus. I travelled to Belarus. However things did not materialize.

Interesting how this “Benjamin Velcro” seems to be drawn to US-sponsored color revolutions. 👇

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Canada failed when it trained Ukrainian troops linked to the far right, says Nazi hunter

Canada failed when it trained Ukrainian troops linked to the far right, says Nazi hunter

A top Nazi hunter and Holocaust scholar says Canada failed when it allowed Ukrainian military personnel connected to far-right groups to receive training as recently as 17 months ago.

Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel said in an interview with this newspaper that Canada failed to properly monitor its own military training program. “The Canadian government didn’t do its due diligence,” he said. “It’s the responsibility of the Canadian defence ministry to know exactly who they are training.”

“There is no question that there are neo-Nazis in different forms in Ukraine, whether they are in the Azov regiment or other organizations,” he added.

Corporate media parrots the Azov Battalion

Corporate media parrots the Azov Battalion

A cheerleader for Ukrainian nationalism and war, [Illia] Ponomarenko regularly posts gory photos of dead Russian soldiers and calls for NATO to intervene in the war on Ukraine’s behalf, thus assisting a social media campaign by Ukraine’s armed forces and the far-right that directly violates the Geneva Convention for the humane treatment of prisoners of war.

Notably, [Illia] Ponomarenko’s employer, the newly created Kyiv Independent, receives its funding from western imperialism, including Washington’s National Endowment for Democracy and the EU’s European Endowment for Democracy.

More recently, photos of the apparent killing of civilians in Bucha first appeared on the social media accounts of figures such as Ponomarenko and the far-right “activist” thug Serhii Sternenko. The photos and reports were then fed to Western media outlets, which again seized upon them to call for increased sanctions against Russia and the prosecution of President Vladimir Putin as a war criminal.

Photo captions by the New York Times indicate that Azov Battalion soldiers were among the first to enter Bucha on April 2 after Russian forces left the town on March 30. Despite this fact, claims of a wanton Russian massacre are promoted uncritically while those calling for investigation before judgement are smeared as “Russian trolls.”

Previously:

The Washington Post Finally Admits The Role of the ‘Far Right’ Azov Battalion in Ukraine