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No, but then I wouldn't expect to much credible information on something that largely doesn't exist, and I don't know any credible sources that would unironically use the term 'professional Nazi' either.
Given that the Azov Brigade's primary Nazi-ness was primarily performative, not ideological, and the primary ideological parallel was 'anyone the russians hate who could kill a lot of them had something going for them' rather than 'uber-racist genocidal anti-semetic state-supremacist nationalist with a desire to conquer Europe and colonize the east,' I'm also unclear what you think a 'trained, professional Nazi brigade' entails. Fashion-conscious parades? Cosplay with vigor? Casual drives through the Ardennes?
The neo-nazi accusation is about as old as the Russian incursion into Ukraine, which is to say 2014 and attempted at the Nova Russia uprising that fizzled into the Separatists, and has been the go-to accusation for the Russian propaganda aparatus for a decade now. It's about as well founded as it ever was. The Azovs were Nazis in much the same way that Satanists are worshippers of evil- it was (and to a degree still is) a form of unrepentant defiance by identifying with your hated outgroup's nominal worst fear / hated foe, rather than with what otherwise might be presented as a cultural sibling.
At the end of the day, the Azovs were one of a large number of private and oligarch-sponsored militias groups that rose during the chaos of Russia's attempted nova russia uprising. They weren't particularly nazi, unless you conflate all right-wing politics with nazi, and the only thing particularly notable about them aside from their wearing accusations like a badge of honor was a relatively high valor and willingness to keep fighting, which is why they were notably effective, and one of the reasons the Russians have fixated on them in particular.
That Azov formation is long dead. Between the post-2015 reorganization of the oligarchic controlled militias into the national military with replacements of key leaders, the normal military manning cycles, and the extremely high attrition during the Mariupole campaign in 2022, very little of the original formation remains, and the formation itself has been expanded and thus flooded so even pre-war composition would be flooded by outsiders, i.e. diluting the characteristics of the precursor personnel.
Unless you believe that nazism is a magical mind-virus that converts by insinuation and proximity, there's no particular Nazi influence in the Azov Brigade. The Azovs are basically a quote-unquote 'prestige' unit that people want to join because it is prestigious, and it is prestigious does much the same thing as any other, but with better (or, if you prefer, notorious) PR.
"If there's a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, then you got a table with 11 Nazis."
So kind of yeah, that's a somewhat common sentiment among some people.
The counterpoint of this is that the is a Nazi-cosplayer at a table and 10 other people sitting there, then you have a table with 0 Nazis. And if someone comes along and points and shouts 'Nazi', you still have 0 Nazis.
Nazi is as Nazi does, not as Nazi dresses or Nazi-accused. Belief otherwise may be somewhat common sentiment among some people, but these are generally the same people who similarly mis-used 'fascist', and they are just as wrong even if their numbers do allow them to appeal to the bandwagon fallacy.
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That’s a misunderstanding of the phrase though. The phrase doesn’t mean you’ll catch Nazi ideology like it’s COVID. What it means is that if you’re hanging around with Nazis you are already at least okay with the ideas they espouse. It’s not a dealbreaker for you or you won’t sit there and talk to that guy. And I think it’s pretty reasonable in that sense, though it’s true of almost any ideology. If you’re talking to them and especially in the political sense of negotiation with them for power, you’re at least okay enough with them that you’re willing to give them a seat at the political table.
What it means is a threat.
How? Again, it’s not the claim that you catch Nazi like a big. The claim isn’t even about the Nazis per se. The claim is that people willing to have Nazis involved in their professional or political or social circles are at least okay with the ideology.
It's a threat insofar as SJ persecutes Nazis and thus a statement that non-haters of Nazis are Nazis is a threat to persecute anyone who doesn't join in the persecution.
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You don’t think Azov’s high status in Ukraine converts new entrants into true believers in the Nazi stuff?
I mean, obviously they’re not full bore Nazis. But they do seem to be racist ultranationalists, which is close enough for government work.
No, I don't. I've seen no evidence that Azov ever had true believers in the Nazi stuff, let alone converted new entrants into it,
That government work being the Russian state-driven propaganda narrative claiming they are full-bore Nazis, and expecting others to go along with it on 'close enough' grounds that are not, in fact, close enough.
There are a lot of racist ultranationalists in the worlds. Equating them with Nazis or would-be-Nazis-if-empowered is a facile understanding of the Nazis as a polity and an ideology.
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Thanks for the reply. Your arguments regarding the "performative Nazism" of Azov makes sense to me, I find it probable that Azovs are a right wing movement instead. If you could provide additional sources for further reading, that would be helpful.
I don't fully agree with you on both of those point. Azovs doesn't seem to me a prestige unit since all sources arguing for and against them being "neo-nazi" do agree that they have been a particularly effective unit. On the right wing ideological dilution part, that could very well be true but its hard to determine the effectiveness of it and both Ukraine and Russia have incentives to lie.
For reading, I don't have anything specific regarding the Azovs for you on hand, but I would recommend reading into how the oligarchs of Ukraine were involved in the Nova Russia uprising, both in aligning with and against, and how the early 2014 militias were formed / organized / incorporated into the Ukrainian armed forces.
Being a particularly effective fighting force is why they are prestigious, despite the infamy. But being a particularly effective unit is not an exceptional status, it is a relative status, and half of all units are above average.
What sets Azovs above and apart from most other above-average units- in additional to much higher media visibility (in part due to Russian efforts)- is that the Azovs have been at some of the more notable front lines where the Russians simultaneously had the most visibility but also showed their limits, which naturally leads to the self-serving deflection narratives of 'we're not bad, they're just good.' That was literally how they first gained notice- their origin is that of a militia formed and fighting before the formal armed forces of Ukraine were able to be reorganized during the Nova Russia campaign (giving Azov rivals of mostly-forgotten militias that didn't stand the test of time) in a conflict that the Russian proxies did so badly in that (giving the Azovs a contextual win) that the Russian army had to intervene (giving their survival it's own victory-against-the-odds narrative).
Consider how the 'modern' Azov's most significant performance was in the Mariupol defense of 2022, when the Russians were forced into a three month siege. For the later in particular, a three month siege of basically March / April / May 24. Standing ground and holding out in a 3-month siege is no joke and deserves the kudos... but it's also shaped by the factor that they had very good reason to believe the Russians would kill them outright (or in a show trial) if they surrendered due to them being used as part of the Russian de-nazification war narrative, and the fact that multi-month sieges were kind of a defining characteristic of the Russian invasion after the first few months, and also that the mariupol offensive was the primary Russian offensive in that part of Summer 22 while most of the rest of the front was static with marginal creeping artillery advances elsewhere. So while the fact that the Azovs fought hard is true and commendable, but it's also relatively normal for units of highly motivated people with good cause to fear surrender, and the dramatic image of defense and hard fighting was... kind of normal across the line in a number of places.
Azov's distinction in the war isn't hard fighting or urban defensive fighting. It's branding while doing that, when most Ukrainian units that did so lack the reputation or international visiblity or the contextual international drama for the times Azov was most visible when Ukraine was still in chaos in 2014, and when the post-Kyiev Russian offensive was still new and uncertain in 2022 and people thought a dedicated Russian offensive in the south could sweep the southern coast. After the Mariupole campaign, most people understood the Russians weren't going to steamroll the south, so units that fought just as hard wouldn't get the same valor / public credit that Azov did because it was expected rather than a surprise for the Russians to struggle so hard for so long.
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