Доброволчески въоръжени формирования в следмайданна Украйна: политическа предистория и някои особености на възникването на полк „Азов”
Ultra-Nationalist Armed Volunteer Formations in Post-Maidan Ukraine: Some Peculiarities of the Emergence of the “Azov”

Summary/Abstract: This paper provides a fi rst empirical investigation and tentative political contextualization of one of the earliest and most important irregular paramilitary formations of post-revolutionary Ukraine in 2014. It discusses the rise of the Ukrainian far right after 1991, and surveys briefl y the emergence of volunteer battalions in 2014. It focuses on some of the exceptional traits in the prehistory and creation of the ‘Azov’ battalion founded by a group of neo-Nazi activists from the organization Social-National Assembly/Patriot of Ukraine. It details, in articular, some strange aspects of the cooperation between the ‘Azov’ founders and the political provocateur Dmytro Korchinskiy as well as the infamous populist Oleh Liashko. It characterizes ‘Azov’ as an altogether untypical volunteer unit in post-Maidan Ukraine in terms of the past and the ideology of its founders. However, the paper only touches upon some particularly intriguing issues in the emergence of this unit, and does not attempt to give an overall assessment of its nature as a political grouping as well as military foundation as it doesnot venture beyond the year 2014.

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