[usrusr]

Nobody believes Russians these days. For good reason. Have you forgotten all the lies served by Putin in the run-up to the invasion? Those weren't "clever ruses", those were lies as crude as those of a preschooler who has just discovered that you can say counterfactual things. They kill Russians: yes, that's what happens in a war. There has been a war for eight years.

Nothing you wrote is the tiniest evidence that they are nazis, completely besides the point.

Doesn't change the fact though that they certainly are self-identifying Nazi, in a sad perversion of "the enemy of the enemy is my friend"

Perhaps they are falling to the same misperception you seem to fall to, equating nazism with "against Russia". Tell that to a Frenchman, tell that to a Pole. Tell that to a Jew of any nationality. No, actual Nazism was not "against Russians". That wasn't part of their identity at all. Actual Nazis literally didn't give a shit about Russians in specific, they just wanted the land and the people currently on it happened to be Russians. But they would have tried exactly the same on any other ethnicity.

[drran]

> Doesn't change the fact though that they certainly are self-identifying Nazi, in a sad perversion of "the enemy of the enemy is my friend"

Are you member of Azov regiment or know them personally? If not, then list your arguments, please.

For Russians, anybody who is strong and against RF (or is ally of US) is Nazi, including Jews. It's like a gold medal for the enemy of RF.

[usrusr]

Sorry, I seem to have missed the well-deserved sarcasm in your statement, I guess we agree in everything but my claim about nazi self-identification.

What lead me to that claim: Just eight years of sometimes watching from afar (very far) and initially being quite confused by the occasional evidence (or what seemed like it?). Eventually I came to assume that they were effectively taught "from the same schoolbooks" (maybe not literally, but who knows) this Russian misappropriation of the term nazi and then simply applied logic: "if I'm against Russia then I guess I'm a nazi, heil whatever that guy was called!"

Quite unlikely (understatement!) that they actually are out to build a fourth reich and work on an Endlösung. I wrote "self-identify", not "are": I'm German and we like to think that we know a thing or two about actual nazism. But I wouldn't be surprised if occasionally some poor chap fell too deep into the ideological rabbit hole and inadvertently produced propaganda ammunition for Putinists. I suspect that the propaganda battle might be going much less bad for Putinists if the Ukraine was led by someone not quite as immune to being called a nazi (I guess bookies stopped taking bets for Time Person of the Year already?)