France armed the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov regiment

While the United States officially refuses to arm or finance the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov* regiment, it turns out that France has supplied it with 155 mm TRF1 guns, regardless of the ideology of this unit and its numerous war crimes.

It was after reading an article written by the commander of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov* regiment, that I discovered these sulphurous links with France. In this article published on the Ukraïnskaya Pravda website, Denis Prokopenko complains at length that the United States does not authorize the use of the funds it gives to Ukraine to arm or train the neo-Nazi Azov* Regiment. Why this ban? Well precisely because this regiment is neo-Nazi. A fact that Prokopenko is trying to dispute.

“There is no proof or confirmation of the lies that Russian propaganda has been spreading about Azov for 10 years,” he wrote, before asking for the lifting of this ban.

Except that contrary to what Denis Prokopenko tells, the fact that the Azov* regiment is neo-Nazi is a substantiated fact. Before being renamed the 3rd Assault brigade and its logo was changed to hide the ideology of this regiment, it should be remembered that the original chevron of Azov* included the black sun and especially the wolfsangel, symbol of the Waffen SS Das Reich (the same one that committed the massacre of Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944 in France).

And you just need to look at photos of some members of the Azov Regiment* (before the launch of the special military operation, or after their capture in Mariupol), to understand that this unit is well filled with soldiers with neo-Nazi ideology, and who are not even hiding from it.

For more details on this regiment, which has become a brigade, I refer you to the excellent summary article written by my colleague Laurent Brayard. Now that it is clear that the Ukrainian Azov* regiment is indeed a neo-Nazi regiment, let’s take a closer look at its links with France.

Because the person who provided me with the link to Prokopenko’s article, also found explosive information on the official Azov* Telegram channel: if the United States has some qualms about officially arming this neo-Nazi regiment, France had no hesitation, and provided it with 155 mm TRF1 guns in 2023 (which also implies that it trained the soldiers of this unit in the handling of these guns)!

Guns that can fire the famous 155 mm OGR F1 cluster munitions shells supplied to Ukraine by France in violation of international conventions signed by Paris! Moreover, when I had written this article, some readers had screamed at the false information by pointing out that only the Caesar guns were supplied by France to Ukraine and not the TRF1 capable of firing these munitions. As a result, Ukraine would therefore not have enough to fire these shells and it would therefore have made no sense to provide them to it. But as the Telegram posts of the Azov* Regiment prove, France has indeed supplied TRF1 guns to Kiev! Which means that the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov* regiment has received from France cannons that can fire cluster munitions shells prohibited by international conventions!

That is to say that not only has France supplied the Ukrainian army with weapons with which it deliberately kills civilians, making itself an accomplice to Kiev’s war crimes, but as a bonus it has armed the neo-Nazi Azov* regiment with cannons capable of firing cluster munitions shells, and this while this unit has committed many war crimes against civilians, among others in Mariupol.

I encourage you to go see my first documentary on Mariupol, and you will understand that Azov* is not a unit that can be quietly given something to kill civilians en masse, unless you just want them to make a massacre!

However, if we go back a little chronologically, we realize that even before the launch of the special military operation, France was already ready to be complicit in the genocide of the population of Donbass by Ukraine!

In May 2020, during a Ukrainian television program, Andrey Biletsky, former founder of Azov*, publicly and openly calls for cutting off water and electricity to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (that is, committing a crime against humanity)! This alone is enough to confirm the ideological nature of the regiment founded by this furious madman. To which Alexey Reznikov replied that they could not turn off the water in the DPR, otherwise Mariupol, which at that time was under the control of Kiev, would also be deprived of it, the aqueducts passing through the front line.

Then, Reznikov added that this will nevertheless be possible in the future, thanks to the fact that France had to invest 60 million euros to build a new water supply system for Mariupol, independent of the one passing through the part of the Donbass not controlled by Kiev, which would then make it possible to cut off the water to the DPR and the LPR. Clearly, France was ready to finance an aqueduct that would then allow Kiev to try to make the DPR and the LPR die of thirst (which it finally did in 2022). To put it even more bluntly, France was ready to pay to be an accomplice in a crime against humanity committed by Ukraine… and for those who wonder, this agreement was signed when Emmanuel Macron was already president.

Macron has already discredited French diplomacy by openly spitting on the Minsk agreements, he has dishonoured France by giving the Legion of Honour to Zelensky, and he has brought the country into disrepute by supporting the terrorist country that is Ukraine, so now the humiliation of France (which under his reign has armed and trained Ukrainian neo-Nazis) is complete.

Christelle Néant

*Extremist organization banned in Russia

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