A Century of Wounds
It was April 2022, and I was drinking Brunello in the hills above Montalcino, a town that smells like stone, rosemary, and money. The sun was setting in long, golden streaks over the Tuscan landscape—cypress-lined ridges and vineyard rows tracing lines like scars on old skin. I had just finished a stint in Ukraine and was preparing to return. That night, I was talking with an old friend over dinner on a terrace overlooking the Val d’Orcia.
We were discussing the Azov Regiment and the broader presence of the far right in Ukraine. At one point, he put down his glass and asked, bluntly:
“So… are the Ukrainians Nazis? Or is this just far right versus far right?”
I took a sip, leaned back in my chair, and said:
“Both sides have far-right elements. But that’s not the point.”
It was too beautiful an evening to drag him through the thickets of post-Soviet nationalism, paramilitary history, and the nihilistic subcultures bleeding into this war. But the question stuck with me. And it deserves a real answer—especially now, when so many commentators retreat into binaries.
Let me be clear: I’m no friend of the far right. Nor of the far left. Frankly, I’ve stopped believing in those labels altogether. But for the sake of clarity, we’ll use them the way most people understand them—crude directional pointers in a terrain shaped more by trauma than ideology.
Yes, Eastern Europe has long had a problem with right-wing ethnonationalism. Much of it crystallized in the wreckage of the Soviet collapse. It was, in part, a backlash against the false internationalism of communism, which cloaked Russian imperialism in red flags and hammer-and-sickle iconography. But it was also something older—a generational revolt against the regime that had choked their families for decades.
The people of Central and Eastern Europe understood what was at stake in the Second World War in a way we never did. For them, it was not a moral parable about good and evil. It was a question of who would rule them—Berlin or Moscow. Many who grew up in the ruins of the Iron Curtain, while we in the West were high on dot-com bubbles and sitcoms, turned toward the hardest possible version of rebellion. If communism brought them ruin, then its opposite must bring salvation.
This is the story beneath the surface—messy, uncomfortable, and necessary. So let’s talk about it.
Back in 2014, Ukraine was not a place easily understood through a Western lens. It was one of the poorest, whitest countries in the world—grappling with a profound identity crisis. Would it align with the West, or was it destined to remain within Moscow’s geopolitical orbit as the so-called spiritual homeland of the Russian people?
This was a nation shaped not by collapse alone, but by decades of systemic dysfunction. Its poverty wasn’t like what we associate with the Global South. Ukraine had roads, rails, heavy industry, and farmland so rich it had once fed half of Europe. It had all the necessary ingredients for prosperity: fertile soil, abundant natural resources, and access to a warm-water port in the Black Sea. But prosperity never came—because geography had cursed it with the interest of empires.
Ukrainian nationalism, complex and often uncomfortable, stretches deep into the 20th century. It’s not a clean story. Prior to the Second World War, western Ukraine—particularly the region of Galicia—had spent centuries under foreign rule. First the Austro-Hungarians, then the Poles. But in 1939, under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union conspired to dismember Poland. Hitler invaded from the west; Stalin from the east. Galicia was absorbed into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and, when the dust settled after the war, it was never returned to Poland.
What followed was not quiet assimilation, but bitter resistance. Western Ukraine became the epicenter of an armed insurgency against Soviet rule—a guerrilla war that lasted nearly a decade after the Red Army declared victory. The core of this resistance was the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), born out of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, or OUN. Its most infamous leader, Stepan Bandera, had a vision of an independent Ukraine carved from both German and Soviet imperial projects. Bandera’s legacy remains radioactive: his followers declared independence in 1941, collaborated tactically with the Nazis, and later fought against both Hitler and Stalin. Some participated in ethnic cleansing; others died in the forests resisting Soviet rule into the 1950s.
Moscow never forgot this defiance. The Soviets responded with mass deportations, executions, and decades of targeted repression. Ukrainian nationalism, especially in the western provinces, was driven underground—but it never vanished. It simmered through the Brezhnev stagnation and Gorbachev’s reforms, waiting for the center to crack.
Eastern Ukraine, meanwhile, remained more tightly integrated into the Soviet machine. Cities like Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk were industrial hubs where the Russian language and Soviet identity were dominant. The contrast between east and west was stark—two populations sharing a flag but not always a future.
The Right in Ukraine
By the time 2014 arrived, Ukraine was not just a country in crisis; it was a country still wrestling with borders drawn in blood, and ghosts that refused to stay buried. Historically, Ukrainian nationalism drew strength from its past—sometimes proudly, sometimes problematically. But once the little green men came marching into Crimea and the Donbas, something shifted. Ukrainians, regardless of language or background, responded the way people do when their home is under siege. They may have disagreed about history, but they agreed on one thing: Do not come here and destroy our country. Russian aggression gave birth to a new kind of nationalism—less ideologically rigid, more civic in nature, and forged in real-time by war.
In the chaos that followed Maidan, with the state fractured and the military hollowed out, volunteer battalions filled the vacuum. Among them were some with clean motives—and others with darker origins. The most notorious was the Azov Battalion, formed in May 2014 out of the remnants of Kharkiv-based “ultras” (football hooligans), far-right street activists, and fringe nationalists. Its founders included figures from the neo-pagan and white nationalist scene, and some early recruits wore SS-style insignia and had prison tattoos of swastikas and Slavic runes. Azov wasn’t subtle, and it didn’t try to be. But it was also effective. While Ukraine’s regular forces struggled to mobilize, Azov pushed into Mariupol and retook the city from Russian-backed separatists.
Azov wasn’t alone. Right Sector—another far-right movement forged in the fires of Maidan—emerged as a paramilitary force with ideological roots in the OUN-B tradition of Bandera-style nationalism. Their ranks drew from nationalist youth groups, Carpathian mountain militias, and occasionally, outright fascist cells. Other battalions like Aidar and Donbas attracted a mix of patriots, opportunists, and extremists. In those early months of the war, the frontlines were manned by whoever had a rifle and was willing to fight. The Ukrainian government, desperate and disoriented, looked the other way.
But as the state regained its footing, it began to reassert control. By 2015, Ukraine had begun the slow process of integrating the volunteer battalions into formal military structures. Some fighters were absorbed into the newly professionalized National Guard; others were pushed to the margins or disbanded entirely. Azov, while retaining its name and mythos, was brought nominally under Ministry of Interior control and became a regiment within the National Guard. The uniforms changed. So did the messaging. By 2017, the more overtly neo-Nazi iconography was scrubbed, the worst elements were either sidelined or quieted, and Azov became something closer to a professional unit—still controversial, but no longer an unregulated militia.
That “taming,” however, came with a trade-off. The military absorbed the muscle, while the ideology metastasized into politics. Veterans of Azov and Right Sector founded the National Corps and other small parties, trying—and mostly failing—to translate wartime valor into electoral power. Ukraine’s far-right has never polled well; even at the height of nationalist fervor, it struggled to break 5% nationally. Unlike in Hungary or Poland, Ukrainian society remained too pluralistic, too fractured by Soviet trauma, and too fixated on real enemies to rally around fascism in any meaningful way.
Still, the myth of Ukraine as a far-right hotbed never went away—particularly in Russian propaganda, where Azov’s early iconography was looped on repeat to justify full-scale invasion. But for those who were actually there in 2014, it was never that simple. The men with skull masks and Mjölnir tattoos fought next to Jewish conscripts, Russian-speaking Ukrainians, and apolitical farmers with no ideology at all—only a rifle and a reason to use it.
National Bolshevism: The Far Right in Russia
Russia has its own deep-rooted problem with fascism and ultranationalism—arguably one more entangled with the state than in any other country in Eastern Europe. Like Ukraine, Russia’s far-right subcultures emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union: a collapse of identity, a lost empire, and a generation of young men radicalized by poverty, humiliation, and war. But where Ukraine’s radical movements remained largely anti-government, Russia’s evolved in tandem with the state—or were co-opted by it.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, far-right gangs roamed Russian cities with near impunity. Skinhead violence, racist attacks, and ultranationalist marches surged. These weren’t fringe incidents; by 2008, hate crimes in Russia were among the highest in Europe. Football hooligan firms became breeding grounds for xenophobia and racial violence. Many operated as proto-paramilitary groups, protecting local powerbrokers, intimidating opposition, and feeding young men into contract fighting in Chechnya and later Ukraine. The violence reached such levels that the Kremlin, fearing a loss of control, cracked down in the late 2000s—jailing some leaders, banning groups like Slavic Union, and tightening surveillance on nationalist organizations.
But the crackdown didn’t purge the ideology. It refined it—and redirected it. Where Ukraine’s far-right was mostly allergic to state power, Russia’s became infused with it. The key figure in this fusion is Aleksandr Dugin, a philosopher, political theorist, and the architect of a strain of ideology sometimes called National Bolshevism. Once considered a fringe radical, Dugin is now one of the intellectual lodestars of the Russian ultra-right. His worldview blends Orthodox mysticism, Eurasian empire-building, and Stalinist aesthetics into a coherent narrative: liberalism must be destroyed, and Russia is ordained to replace it with a new civilizational order.
Dugin’s foundational text, The Foundations of Geopolitics (1997), has reportedly been used in Russian military academies. In it, he argues for a multipolar world led by a “Eurasian empire” centered on Russia. He envisions a geopolitical crusade—not just against NATO, but against Enlightenment values themselves. In this vision, Russia is the “Third Rome,” the last bastion of traditional civilization, destined to expand its influence into Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Though he doesn’t formally serve in government, Dugin’s fingerprints are all over the ideological justification for the war in Ukraine. His “Fourth Political Theory” proposes a synthesis of fascism, communism, and traditionalism—without the constraints of Western modernity. He has called for the destruction of Ukraine as a sovereign state, describing it as an artificial Western creation. In 2014, he infamously declared: “Kill, kill, kill Ukrainians, kill them all.” While not official policy, Duginism echoes in the speeches of Russian officials, the messaging of state media, and the war aims articulated by the Kremlin.
This is not mere academic obscurity. In Russia, the far-right isn’t just marching in the streets—it’s embedded in the worldview of the regime. Where Ukraine sought to tame its extremists, Russia elevated them. The result is a state that doesn’t just tolerate revanchist violence—it exports it as strategy.
Russia has some especially vile far-right units as well. The Rusich Group, led by neo-Nazi extremists Alexey Milchakov and Yan Petrovsky, operates with a level of brutality that makes even Wagner look restrained. Rusich fighters have posted videos of tortured Ukrainian soldiers, posed with mutilated bodies, and openly espouse neo-pagan fascism.
Milchakov, who first gained notoriety by decapitating a puppy on camera, has been photographed wearing SS insignia and reportedly joked about drinking from a human skull during a stand-up routine.
Far from being rogue actors, groups like Rusich have worked alongside Wagner and other Russian units with tacit state approval—offering a glimpse into the ideological sewer that undergirds parts of Moscow’s war machine.
From the Front, It Looks Different
In Ukraine, I once found myself in a trench beside a French fascist and a South American who was likely just there for the money. We passed around a pack of smokes and swapped stories under incoming shellfire. I came partly out of moral conviction—but if I’m honest, it was heartbreak that brought me. Grief has a way of dragging men toward war—not to die, exactly, but to burn off the parts of themselves they can’t carry anymore.
Everyone had their reasons. Some wanted glory. Others wanted to disappear. A few wanted blood. But ideology? That faded fast. In the cold, the mud, and the noise, no one was quoting Dugin or Bandera. They were just trying not to bleed out.
I’ve seen the far-right fighters who showed up. They exist—but they were never the center of gravity. The far right is part of the illustration, not the theme. Russia invaded Ukraine to reclaim its empire. Full stop. This is a state that poisons dissidents, censors history, and throws journalists off balconies. It’s war isn’t about ideology. It’s about domination.
There’s a lesson here—one George Orwell understood better than most: if you sabotage your own cause because of the worst people who show up to fight for it, you’re handing victory to your enemies. That’s part of why Republican Spain lost. And it’s the trap Ukraine’s critics keep falling into—fixating on fringe symbols while ignoring the far larger reality.
Whatever Ukraine was before—fractured, corrupt, burdened by history—it is now something else. Ukrainians are fighting to the death not to become Russian. That is the point. Everything else is noise.