Nazi symbols on Ukraine’s front lines highlight thorny issues of history

KYIV, Ukraine — Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine last year, the Ukrainian government and NATO allies have posted and then quietly deleted three seemingly innocuous photos from their social media feeds: one soldier standing in a group, another standing in a trench rests and an aid worker poses in front of a truck.

In each photo, Ukrainians in uniform wore patches with symbols made infamous by Nazi Germany and have since become part of the iconography of far-right hate groups.

The photos, and their deletions, highlight the Ukrainian military’s complicated relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under both Soviet and German occupation during World War II.

That relationship has become particularly delicate because President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia falsely declared Ukraine a Nazi state, a claim he used to justify his illegal invasion.

Ukraine has spent years working through legislation and military restructuring to contain a fringe far-right movement whose members proudly wear symbols steeped in Nazi history and embrace positions hostile to leftists, LGBTQ movements and ethnic minorities . But some members of these groups have been fighting against Russia since the Kremlin illegally annexed part of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014 and are now part of the wider military structure. Some are regarded as national heroes, even as the far right remains politically marginalized.

The iconography of these groups, including a skull and crossbones patch worn by concentration camp guards and a symbol known as the Black Sun, now appears with some regularity on the uniforms of soldiers fighting on the front lines, including soldiers who say images symbolize Ukrainian sovereignty and pride, not Nazism.

In the short term, that risks reinforcing Mr Putin’s propaganda and fueling his false claims that Ukraine should be “denazified” – a position that ignores the fact that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish. More generally, Ukraine’s ambivalence about these symbols, and sometimes even acceptance of them, risks giving new life to icons that the West has been trying to eliminate for more than half a century.

“What worries me, in the Ukrainian context, is that people in Ukraine who are in positions of leadership are either unable or unwilling to recognize and understand how these symbols are viewed outside of Ukraine,” said Michael Colborne, a researcher at the Bellingcat research group that studies the international extreme right. “I think Ukrainians should increasingly realize that these images undermine support for the country.”

In a statement, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said that, as a country that suffered greatly from the German occupation, “we emphasize that Ukraine categorically condemns any manifestation of Nazism.”

So far, the images have not eroded international support for the war. However, it has put diplomats, Western journalists and advocacy groups in a difficult position: drawing attention to the iconography threatens to influence Russian propaganda. By saying nothing, it can spread.

Even Jewish groups and anti-hate organizations that have traditionally chanted hateful symbols have remained largely silent. Privately, some leaders have worried that they would be seen as supporters of Russian propaganda talking points.

Questions about how to interpret such symbols are as divided as they are persistent, and not just in Ukraine. In the American South, some have insisted that the Confederate flag today is a symbol of pride, not a history of racism and segregation. The swastika was an important Hindu symbol before it was co-opted by the Nazis.

In April, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine posted a photo to his Twitter account of a soldier wearing a patch with a skull and crossbones known as the Totenkopf, or Death’s Head. The specific symbol in the photo was made infamous by a Nazi unit that committed war crimes and guarded concentration camps during World War II.

The patch in the photo places the Totenkopf on top of a Ukrainian flag with a small number 6 below it. That patch is the official merchandise of Death in June, a British neo-folk band that the Southern Poverty Law Center has said produce “hate speech” that “exploits themes and images of fascism and Nazism.”

The Anti-Defamation League considers the Totenkopf “a common hate symbol”. But Jake Hyman, a spokesperson for the group, said it was impossible to “make an inference about the carrier or the Ukrainian military” based on the patch.

“The image, while offensive, is that of a musical band,” Mr Hyman said.

The band is now using the photo posted by the Ukrainian military to market the Totenkopf patch.

The New York Times asked Ukraine’s Defense Ministry about the tweet on April 27. The message was deleted a few hours later. “After studying this case, we have come to the conclusion that this logo can be interpreted ambiguously,” the ministry said in a statement.

The soldier pictured was part of a volunteer unit called the Da Vinci Wolves, which began as part of the paramilitary wing of Ukraine’s “Right Sector”, a coalition of right-wing organizations and political parties that militarized after the illegal annexation of the Crimea through Russia. .

At least five other photos on the Wolves’ Instagram and Facebook pages show soldiers wearing Nazi-style patches, including the Totenkopf.

NATO militaries, an alliance Ukraine hopes to join, will not tolerate such patches. When such symbols have appeared, groups such as the Anti-Defamation League have spoken out, and military leaders responded quickly.

Last month, the Ukrainian state emergency service posted on Instagram a photo of an aid worker wearing a Black Sun symbol, also known as a Sonnenrad, who appeared at the castle of Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi general and SS director. The Black Sun is popular among neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

In March 2022, NATO’s Twitter account posted a photo of a Ukrainian soldier wearing a similar patch.

Both photos were quickly deleted.

In November, during a meeting with Times reporters near the frontline, a Ukrainian press officer wore a Totenkopf variant made by a company called R3ICH (pronounced “Reich”). He said he did not believe the patch was affiliated with the Nazis. A second press officer present said other journalists had asked soldiers to remove the patch before taking pictures.

Ihor Kozlovskyi, a Ukrainian historian and religious scholar, said the symbols had meanings unique to Ukraine and should be interpreted by how Ukrainians saw them, not how they had been used elsewhere.

“The symbol can live in any community or any history, regardless of how it is used in other parts of the Earth,” Kozlovskyi said.

Russian soldiers have also been seen in Ukraine with Nazi-style patchesunderlining how complicated interpreting these symbols can be in a region steeped in Soviet and German history.

The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939, so it was taken by surprise two years later when the Nazis invaded Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. Ukraine had suffered greatly under a Soviet government that caused a famine that killed millions. Many Ukrainians initially saw the Nazis as liberators.

Factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its insurgent army fought alongside the Nazis in what they perceived as a battle for Ukrainian sovereignty. Members of those groups also participated in atrocities against Jewish and Polish civilians. Later in the war, however, some groups fought against the Nazis.

Some Ukrainians joined Nazi military units such as the Waffen-SS Galizien. The emblem of the group, which was led by German officers, was a sky-blue patch topped with a lion and three crowns. The unit joined in a massacre of hundreds of Polish civilians in 1944. In December, after years of legal battleUkraine’s highest court ruled that a government-funded research institute may continue to list the unit’s insignia as excluded from the Nazi symbols banned under a 2015 law.

With a new generation fighting against the Russian occupation, many Ukrainians see the war as a continuation of the struggle for independence during and immediately after World War II. Symbols such as the flag associated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Galizien patch have become emblems of anti-Russian resistance and national pride.

That makes it difficult to easily separate Ukrainians outraged over the Russian invasion from those who support the country’s far-right groups on the basis of icons alone.

Units such as the Da Vinci Wolves, the more famous Azov Regiment and others that started with far-right members have collapsed into the Ukrainian military and have played a major role in defending Ukraine against Russian forces.

The Azov regiment was celebrated after holding out last year during the siege of the southern city of Mariupol. After the commander of the Da Vinci Wolves was killed in March, he received a hero’s funeral, which Mr. Zelensky attended.

“I think some of these far-right units mix quite a bit of their own myths with the public discourse about them,” said Mr Colborne, the researcher. “But I think the least that can and should be done everywhere, not just in Ukraine, is to prevent the symbols, rhetoric and ideas of the far right from seeping into the public debate.”

Kitty Bennett And Susan C. Beachy contributed research.