Earlier in 2024, Azov’s openly neo-Nazi brigade in the Ground Forces of Ukraine announced that a handful of its fighters were launching a summer tour of Europe. Apparently they were expecting to be treated like rock stars. This unit, the 3rd Assault Brigade, is not to be confused with Azov’s other (more famous) brigade in the National Guard, which has made an effort to refine its image for Western liberals.
Much of the tour was cancelled, a month before the “Nation Europa” event, and not long after yours truly revealed that a decorated 3rd Assault fighter visited Auschwitz to mock the Holocaust. He went there wearing a shirt from the Russian-Ukrainian neo-Nazi band “M8L8TH” with a quote attributed to Hitler on the back. Thanks to Dreznica Goat, readers of this blog already learned that the bass guitar player in M8L8TH is a medic in the 3rd Assault Brigade who represented the Nation Europa network at a roundtable of neo-Nazis on Ukraine’s Independence Day.
On the left, from the “Nation Europa” conference, a slide says “Solidarity with Mr. Bond!” referring to an Austrian neo-Nazi sentenced to 10 years in prison. On the right, a picture from the Auschwitz stunt.My article about the conference failed to identify several of the participants, most importantly Andriy Malkov, an organizer of the event, who made multiple speeches and moderated the roundtable discussion. He also appears to have served in the 3rd Assault Brigade, which is commanded by Azov leader Andriy Biletsky.
Malkov was once part of the “Rodychi” (Relatives) gang of white supremacist football hooligans in Kyiv, from which an important clique in the Azov movement — and a rival splinter group — emerged. For more than half a decade, his old friend Serhii Filimonov has led the militant organization “Gonor” (Honor), which essentially “sold out” as the [neofascist] [neo]pagan stormtroopers of the Western-funded NGO complex in Ukraine. Apparently they are no longer friends. It’s easy to imagine that the future organizer of “Nation Europa” found himself at a crossroads.
“Nation Europa” organizer Andriy Malkov, seen above-right with Ulana Suprun, former Healthcare Minister of Ukraine (2016–19)A coalition of neo-Nazi hipster hooligans, radical NGO activists, far-right influencers and military fundraisers is apparently being groomed for the big stage by powerful interests, if only to ride the coattails of a potential successor to Volodymyr Zelensky.
Serhii Filimonov, in his younger days on the right. On the left, his tattoos include a Nazi Totenkopf above his knee, neo-pagan symbols on his shoulders, and between them it says, “Victory or Valhalla.”Over ten years ago, Andriy Malkov commented on a picture of Serhii Filimonov, 19, wearing the same shirt from the “White Boys Club” that we’ve already seen on Malkov. The White Boys Club is an umbrella of hooligan firms that support FC Dynamo Kyiv and the Azov movement. In 2014, Filimonov joined the Azov Battalion with the call-sign “Son of Perun,” referring to the Slavic god of war that neo-Nazi [neo]pagans tend to worship. In a 2022 interview, Filimonov said, “those who are interested know that ‘Gonor’ are pagans. And many [far-right/neo-Nazi] symbols that can scare people are actually related to our religion.” In fact, “We look after the temple on Lysa Hora.”
Serhii Filimonov and friends from Gonor at the Perun shrine on Lysa Hora (Bald Hill) in Kyiv. “Son of Perun” apparently edited the picture on the right to remove Sashko Vovk’s openly neo[fascist] tattoos.Malkov and Filimonov fought in the Azov Battalion a decade ago, when it had a reputation for being an openly neo[fascist] unit. Subsequently, they joined the nascent Azov movement’s Civic Corps, a forerunner to its political party, the National Corps. “Son of Perun” led the Kyiv branch of both organizations. The journalist Oleksiy Kuzmenko tells us, “Filimonov’s old social media posts from his days in the Azov include a 2014 post seemingly honoring Adolf Hitler’s birthday with thematic songs and a commentary ‘I regret that you won’t rise up like Jesus, grandpa’, etc. Filimonov’s VK also links to ‘SoberNazi’ Twitter handle.”
Left to right at a 2015 meeting of the Azov Civic Corps: Serhii Filimonov, Andriy Malkov, “Sashko Vovk”After Dynamo Kyiv won the 2015 Ukrainian Cup final, fans swarmed the field and Malkov’s friend Rostislav Karpich ran onto the pitch with a swastika on his shirt. Malkov had the same one. Later that year, Rodychi hooligans from the Civic Corps — including Filimonov’s close friend Ihor Potashenkov, or “Malyar” (Painter) — viciously attacked black soccer fans at a European Champions League match in the Ukrainian capital.
Clockwise from top-right: Ihor Potashenkov attacking a black soccer fan (2015), Potashenkov and Malkov at a Dynamo Kyiv game (2017), Rostislav Karpich and Malkov in Vienna (2018), and Karpich with his swastika shirt (2015)Filimonov’s gang of [neofascist] hooligans went unpunished for these high-profile hate crimes, despite an international media spotlight and consequences for Dynamo Kyiv. Oleksiy Kuzmenko noted in 2018, Potashenkov was an “active participant of some of Ukraine’s iconic and more controversial moments during the [2013–14] Euromaidan demonstrations.” Kuzmenko reported that in 2016, this notoriously violent neo[fascist] with “clearly visible swastika tattoos” on his head nevertheless received “sophisticated training” from the European Security Academy based in Poland.
Evolution of Ihor Potashenkov, aka “Malyar” — from attacking riot police in Kyiv (2013) to wearing a neo[fascist] shirt while undergoing his training at the European Security Academy in Poland (2016)From 2015–18, Andriy Malkov appears to have grown as close as ever with Filimonov’s circle of Azov veterans, in particular Ihor Potashenkov and Nazarii Kravchenko, who was the deputy head of the National Corps. In 2018, the State Department’s annual report on human rights practices in Ukraine described the National Corps as a “nationalist hate group.” That year there was a series of neo-Nazi attacks on Romani people and settlements in Ukraine. Filimonov led a group of Azov militants that perpetrated at least one of these “pogroms.”
In the coming weeks, Kateryna Handziuk, an “anti-corruption activist” in Kherson, was attacked with sulfuric acid. Later that year, Handziuk died of complications from the severe injuries that she suffered, and Filimonov’s crew supported the protest campaign, “Who Killed Katya Handziuk?” This appears to have forged an alliance between the Rodychi hooligans and leaders of Ukrainian civil society™ which probably encouraged Filimonov to spearhead an Azov splinter group in 2019. As a project manager for the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union once said,
I had a very cautious optimism when some of the not-so-recent people from the National Corps moved away from Biletsky, created their own civilized NGO, and began to cooperate with healthy civil society forces. In fact, Nazarii Kravchenko, Serhii Filimonov, Igor Malyar [Potashenkov] and all of Gonor became the “security service” during peaceful actions, in which everyone participated: right-wing, left-wing, human rights defenders, veterans… And it was a process of unification that made me very happy.
Nazarii Kravchenko, neo[fascist] former leader of the National Corps (Azov political party), with former CIA director David Petraeus (left, 2019) and Andriy Malkov (right, 2017)Perhaps the “best man” in this marriage, Serhiy Sternenko is a nationalist influencer in Ukraine, and former leader of the extremist Right Sector in Odessa who rebranded as a radical anti-corruption activist. Under Sternenko’s local leadership, Right Sector helped to perpetrate the May 2014 massacre of anti-Maidan activists in Odessa. His friend Kateryna Handziuk was among those who praised the far-right “patriots” that instituted “Ukrainian order” in this Russian-speaking city of southern Ukraine (and poured gasoline on the fire in eastern Ukraine).
Kateryna Handziuk at a nationalist marchSerhii Filimonov’s dramatic falling out with Azov leader Andriy Biletsky was related to his budding alliance with Serhii Sternenko. Biletsky and other Azovites reportedly beat up Filimonov and his right-hand man Nazarii Kravchenko in 2020, and “demanded to know who ordered the media support for Sternenko.”
Two months before Handziuk was viciously attacked with acid outside her home in Kherson, another man assaulted Sternenko in Odessa and wound up dead. To hear it from Christopher Miller, now the Financial Times correspondent in Ukraine, “Sternenko chased the attacker down and sliced his gut open, spilling out his intestines. He posted a video of it and has boasted about chasing the guy down after he was attacked.”
Sternenko subsequently acquired hero status among Rodychi hooligans and radicalized NGO liberals. According to the sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko, “Sternenko is an especially notorious case of a criminal who found a way to avoid punishment for many years via switching from far-right to a pro-Western liberal. I don’t understand why he should be allowed to do this. The civil society that applauded this is very sick.” Katherine Quinn-Judge, a former senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, explained in 2021, “A critical mass of young Ukrainian liberals consider Sternenko A-OK, because a) he’s anti-Russian, b) he’s said that beating up gays isn’t compulsory, c) he has opposed genuine corruption in Odesa, and d) he’s started wearing glasses and whatnot.”
Serhii Sternenko (and Filimonov on the left)The campaign to “Free Sternenko” gave these nationalist bedfellows another cause to rally around (typically with flares, supplied by the Nazi protest experts), which culminated in a riot outside of the presidential office building on his 26th birthday. In the meantime, Sternenko’s friends from the NGO complex grew closer to Gonor. A perfect example is Melanie Podolyak, the daughter of a former deputy minister of culture.
Melanie Podolyak, with Sternenko on the right, wearing a Gonor shirt on the leftSternenko and Podolyak were apparently both friends of Kateryna Handziuk, and by 2021 some people speculated that they were dating. From roughly 2016–19, Podolyak worked as a project manager for the Lviv Media Forum and later the Lviv Security Forum, in which capacity she repeatedly brushed shoulders with retired US general Ben Hodges, a major cheerleader of proxy warfare in Ukraine.
By 2019, Podolyak became an assistant to Oksana Syroyid, a leader of the “Samopomich” (Self Reliance) party and deputy chair of the Ukrainian parliament. Melanie Podolyak reportedly also advised the international department of this pro-Western political party, which was wiped out in the 2019 parliamentary elections. “Low polling doesn’t stop Self Reliance from being every allied embassy’s reform favorites,” observed Jonathan Brunson, a “political warfare analyst” with an eye on the far-right in Ukraine.
Later that year, Podolyak probably took part in Gonor’s new “Academy of Street Protest” featuring Sternenko, Filimonov, and Potashenkov. In any case, she started to wear a shirt from the Gonor “Academy,” the symbol of which is a Molotov cocktail. “Son of Perun” and “Malyar” then visited Hong Kong in December 2019 to engage in “protest tourism.” Filimonov shared a picture of himself at a demonstration wearing his “Who Killed Katya Handziuk” shirt. He captioned his Instagram post in English: “Fight for Freedom!! Stand with Hong Kong!!”
Filimonov in Hong Kong. “What the Hell Are Ukrainian Fascists Doing in the Hong Kong Protests?” asked Vice News. “Far-right hooligans from Ukraine at the Hong Kong protests,” reported the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. Apparently these outlets did not yet receive the memo about Gonor’s “evolution.”In 2019, the Ukrainian School of Political Studies (USPS) created an annual scholarship to honor the memory of its 2015 graduate Kateryna Handziuk. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, “Son of Perun” had to wait until 2021 to become the second recipient of the Handziuk scholarship. According to the USPS, “Filimonov’s activity matches Ukrainian School of Political Studies values. By his work, Serhiy, like Katya Handziuk, defends the interests of the democratic state of Ukraine.” The Council of Europe, “the continent’s leading human rights organization” — not to be confused with the EU’s European Council — funds the USPS, which is proud to be associated with several people in Filimonov’s orbit.
Filimonov at a session of the Ukrainian School of Political StudiesThe USPS awarded Filimonov the scholarship in July 2021, evidently for a summer program. Earlier that year, Filimonov was detained for “hooliganism,” and placed under house arrest, after a mob of Sternenko supporters assaulted the presidential administration building, to protest a prison sentence of seven years for their hero’s kidnapping of a local politician in 2015. Later that year, a court commuted this sentence, and according to Sternenko, the president even offered to make him the head of the Odessa department of the Security Service of Ukraine.
Filimonov after Sternenko supporters attacked the presidential office building. [The 'C' in 'ACAB' there does not necessarily refer to either cops or capitalists.]“Happy birthday Serhii Sternenko,” Melanie Podolyak captioned a Facebook post with her pictures from the incident. The day before Sternenko supporters smashed the front doors, heavily graffitied the facade, and burned the entrance sign to the presidential administration building, she promoted the insurrection with a long Facebook post accompanied by an illustration of a flamethrower. Filimonov reportedly gave the signal for the mob to attack the building by lighting a flare. “Serhiy is ‘guilty’ only because in 2014 he decided that he was ready to spend his youth not just having fun and hanging out,” insisted Podolyak.
Podolyak’s photos from the riot, and the image she used to promote the eventVolodymyr Ishchenko commented on the situation a couple days later, “Western officials and embassies still have not condemned the far-right assault on Ukraine’s presidential office by Sternenko supporters. A reason for this is that the West has supported some of the coordinators of the rally and many of the participants, including financially.”
Filimonov and Sternenko were both represented in court by Masi Nayem, “the lawyer for Ukraine’s national patriotic revolutionary far right,” whose elder sibling Mustafa is a “top Sorosite” credited with launching the “Euromaidan” protest movement in 2013. These Afghan-Ukrainian brothers also have a sister, Mariam, who claims to be “decolonizing the discourse about Ukraine.” As someone on Twitter/X once said, “her whole shtick is diversitywashing Ukrainian nationalism and denying racism exists in Ukraine because she’s never personally experienced it.”
Yaroslav Yurchsyhyn, the former executive director of Transparency International Ukraine (2016–19), is another “anti-corruption activist” and radical liberal-nationalist who came to the rescue of the Sternenko rioters and Gonor hooligans. He participated in the rally and offered to bail out its arrested leaders. Yurchyshyn graduated from the USPS alongside Kateryna Handziuk, and championed the campaign to bring her killers to justice. In 2018, he posed for a picture with Angela Merkel, both of them holding up a shirt that said “Who is Behind the Assault on Kateryna Handziuk?” Since 2019, Yurchsyhyn has been a prominent member of the “Holos” (Voice) party in the Ukrainian parliament, in which it apparently replaced Self Reliance as the “embassy’s favorite.”
(I think that this is as good a spot as any to end this excerpt.)