I don’t mean to beat you over the head with a wall of text, but I finished up this meme.
The Tl;dr of it is:
1. Russia’s prior aggression in 2014 caused the Azov Battalion to arise. They just plain old didn’t exist before Russia started chipping away at Ukrainian territory.
2. Azov’s influence is exaggerated. They’re a militia band in the East, and the Ukrainian government tacitly allows their activity under the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic, but they’re not setting policy for Ukraine.
Warfare is brutal, cataclysmic, and repolarizes politics along different lines.
Let’s consider the following hypothetical: Russia invades Alaska under some pretext. You laugh, but one of Putin’s neo-imperialist absurdities is that the U.S. reneged on the terms of its Alaska Purchase treaty by somehow interfering with the operations of the Russian Orthodox Church. “Religious Liberty” and all that jazz.
So let’s say Russia invades Alaska upon the ridiculously flimsy pretext of “protecting Russian worshippers.” Alaskans, being overall conservative, self-reliant, and well-armed, quickly form into militia bands to oppose the invaders.
The Second Amendment! Well-regulated militia! Security of a free state! This is exactly what our Founders intended!
Let’s say that some of these Alaskan militia groups start to espouse a far-right ideology. They’re anti-Semitic, they’re anti-banker, they have issues with vaccines, etc. etc. Totally plausible, right?
But here’s the thing: They’re patriotic to the core. They want to shoot every go***mn Russkie they can find. And they’re damn good at it, too.
So, who am I — as a card-carrying liberal sitting comfortably in the Lower 48 — to judge what political nonsense they espouse in their free time? The important thing is they’re patriots, and they’re helping secure American freedom. We can resolve our political disagreements in the usual way, with debates and elections, once the Russian invasion crisis passes.
And now you know how a liberal sitting in Kiev or Lviv can make peace with the Azov folks out on the front-lines in the Donbas.