One of Russia’s most feared groups, the Azov battalion, is back on the battlefield, the head of the planning department of the Ukrainian National Guard, Mykola Urshalovych, announced on Thursday.
The soldiers of the regiment, he explained, began to conduct combat missions in the Serebryanske forest area of the Lugansk region.
The battalion commanders returned to Ukraine from Istanbul on 8 July after being imprisoned in Russia and spending 300 days in Turkey as part of a prisoner exchange with Russia.
The battalion was born in 2014 as a resistance movement against pro-Russian forces in the Donbass region.
This paramilitary squadron was considered a terrorist organization by the Supreme Court of Russia and took an active part in the battle of Mariupol, although it eventually fell, despite attempts to resist at the Azovstal steel mill.
Earlier this year, the Ministry of the Interior of Ukraine announced that the paramilitary regiment had officially become a separate brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The presence of this battalion and reserve regimental status granted by the Kiev government are controversial due to the origins of many of its leaders, recognized white supremacists, such as leader Andrey Biletski himself, who served in Moscow’s alleged crusade to denazify Ukraine.
The size of the battalion is estimated to be about 2500 fighters in 2017 and about 900 in 2022. Most of the regiment’s members are Russian-speaking and come from Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine.
The group has been presented by Vladimir Putin as one of the reasons for the need to “denazify” Ukraine, to remove perceived control of the country from far-right forces such as Azov.
Source: DN
