Canada Trained Fighters From Nationalist Azov Battalion Despite Vowing Not to, Local Radio Says

The battalion was created in 2014 as a ragtag unit consisting mostly of the members of the radical right groups, such as the Right Sector, who never hid their nationalist views and often used Nazi symbols in their logos and on their equipment.

Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) spent over $890 million on training Ukrainian soldiers since 2014, including members of the Ukrainian nationalist battalion Azov, Radio Canada has reported, citing obtained documents and photos from several training sessions. According to the media, its fighters even boasted being capable to provide similar training based on the western military standards themselves – to other members of the battalion.

Even though the Canadian government promised that it would never be training fighters for the Azov battalion, precisely because of their deep ties to the radical nationalist groups, several of its members apparently took part in training sessions with the CAF around November 2020 at the Ukrainian National Guard Training Centre in Zolochev.

CAF indeed held sessions for the Ukrainian military at Zolochev between 20 February, 2019 and 13 February, 2022. Radio Canada found several photos posted online from the training and spotted at least two Ukrainian servicemen brandishing their patches with Azov battalion insignia – a Spartan's helmet and a sign similar to the Wolfsangel, a symbol used by some of the German Nazi units.

On a different photo - shot by a photographer from the CAF around the same time and found by the Radio Canada - another Ukrainian soldier is seen wearing a patch with a golden lion and three crowns on a blue background. The same insignia was used by the 14th division of the Waffen-SS, which is a unit created in 1943 from the volunteers in Ukraine to fight against the USSR and Ukrainian compatriots fighting against the Nazi occupants.

The patch of the 14th division of the Waffen-SS does not prove a link between this soldier and the Azov battalion directly. However, Ukrainian nationalists often praise the members of this division of Waffen-SS and have routinely held tribute ceremonies devoted to it since the Western-backed 2014 coup in Ukraine.

Although the Canadian Department of National Defence strongly denied engaging in training of the members of the Azov battalion, it admitted that the Canadian servicemen who held these training sessions had not been tasked with double-checking if the members of the battalion were among their trainees.

Over the course of the educational programme, Canada trained 33,346 Ukrainian servicemen, including, apparently, an undefined number of nationalists from the Azov battalion. The same nationalists, whom Russia is accusing of attacking civilians in the two Donbass republics, the DPR and LPR, which requested Moscow to defend them ahead of 24 February.

Russian armed forces also reported that the members of nationalist battalions did not shy away from using the local population of Ukrainian cities as human shields against the Russian soldiers carrying out the special military operation to demilitarize and "de-Nazify" Ukraine.

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