Volunteer battalions consist of people with a variety of backgrounds, and only part of them are former Euromaidan supporters. Some Russian-language eastern Ukrainians joined volunteer battalions to protect their own homes. Ukraine is a dynamic European country where its citizens have a wide spectrum of opinions, just as the volunteers’ ages and ethnicities vary. And while Azov battalion had a far-right commander in Andriy Biletsky, the leader of the Social-National Assembly and who gathered right-minded young people around him, there was also the Dnipro-1 battalion supported by Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who also headed the “United Jewish community of Ukraine”.
“Nazists” and “Fascists” are figures of hate speech that are widely used by Russian media to describe any Ukrainian army unit, in order to threaten Ukrainian and Russian public and justify terrorists. Right-wing civic movements are not perceived by Ukrainian society as a threat. Ukrainian far-right candidates failed in the last presidential elections, as the two such candidates’ total result was 1.86% of votes. In the same time, Eurosceptic nationalists scored stunning victories in European Parliament elections in France, Britain and other European countries.
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