DoJ Hires Veteran ‘Nazi Hunter’ to Investigate War Crimes in Ukraine

Tens of thousands of neo-Nazi fighters from nearly a dozen extreme-right militias serve alongside the Ukrainian army. US Congress recognized the infamous Azov Regiment as a neo-Nazi unit in 2015. But since February 2022, Western media coverage of the ‘neo-Nazi problem’ in Ukraine has virtually disappeared, with Azov itself undergoing a rebranding.

Eli Rosenbaum, former director of the Department of Justice Office of Special Investigations, has been hired by the DoJ to investigate war crimes in Ukraine.

“To lead this effort, the Attorney General has tapped Eli Rosenbaum to serve as Counselor for War Crimes Accountability,” the DoJ said in a press release Tuesday.

Rosenbaum, 67, is a 36-year veteran of the department, and between 1994 and 2010, in his capacity as chief of the OSI, specialized in identifying, denaturalizing and deporting Nazi war criminals.

The DoJ indicated that in his new role, Rosenbaum would “coordinate efforts across the Justice Department and the federal government to hold accountable those responsible for war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine.”

“The United States stands in solidarity with the people of Ukraine in the face of Russia’s continued aggression and assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” attorney general Merrick Garland was quoted as saying in the release. “America –and the world – has seen the many horrific images and read the heart-wrenching accounts of brutality and death that have resulted from Russia’s unjust invasion.”

The DoJ press release did not specify exactly whose crimes would be investigated by Mr. Rosenbaum.

However, US officials and media have sought to downplay information about the ultranationalist extremists, including both Ukrainians and foreigners, who are taking part in the conflict against Russia. Moscow, Donbass officials and residents have accused these fighters of executing and torturing captured Russian servicemen, indiscriminately shelling cities in the Donbass and their own civilian areas during retreats, and other crimes.

Instead, Washington and its allies have spread Ukrainian reports about alleged war crimes by Russia and its Donbass allies, including the “forced deportation of civilians,” “systematic sexual violence” and deliberate killings of civilians. Alternative media have worked to systematically debunk these allegations in recent months. Meanwhile, in late May, Liudmyla Denisova, Ukraine’s parliamentary commissioner for human rights, was fired after admitting to making up stories about sexual violence purportedly committed by Russian soldiers to “convince the world to provide weapons and pressure” Moscow.

US media reporting on suspected crimes by the Ukrainian side, and on the existence of actual neo-Nazis in the ranks of Ukrainian forces and the problems that they pose, have been virtually non-existent.

Since the February escalation of the eight-year old Ukrainian crisis and the start of Russia’s special operation to demilitarize and denazify the country, a lot of ink has been spilled by mainstream media to try to whitewash the neo-Nazis, obfuscate their ideology, blame Russia for the current “global neo-Nazi recruitment” scheme in Ukraine, or even suggest that the radical right is actually fighting on Russia's side in the conflict.

Earlier this month, the Azov Regiment, the paramilitary militia subordinated to the Ukrainian National Guard, attempted to rebrand, replacing its fashion faux pas Nazi Wolfsangel patch with a golden trident – the symbol of Ukrainian independence. Azov is just one of many neo-Nazi militia units which sprung up in the country after the 2014 US-backed coup d’état in Kiev, with others including Aidar, Dnipro-1 and Dnipro-2, Donbass, Kryvbass, Kherson, and the Right Sector’s Ukrainian Volunteer Corps (DUK).

While Mr. Rosenbaum may have experience hunting for and deporting WWII-era Nazis, the United States, Canada and Western European nations also have extensive know-how dealing with and shielding Nazi war criminals and their allies, evacuating over 1,600 Nazi scientists and engineers to the US via Operational Paperclip between 1945 and 1959, and giving shelter to thousands of others, including high-ranking officials, in a bid to use them against the Soviets in the Cold War. Tens of thousands of war criminals from occupied territories, including collaborators from Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and the Baltic republics, were also welcomed with open arms.

When the extent of the secret US assistance for Nazis was first uncovered in the 1970s, it caused scandal and multiple congressional investigations, with ordinary Americans finding out that the war criminals of the Axis powers they fearlessly fought against during WWII were being cynically protected by the government.