"At no point has Canada's mandate included training members of the Azov Battalion."

"We have reinforced our policy to prevent any recurrence and remain firmly opposed to Nazism, racism, and all forms of extremism while promoting human rights, and the rule of law in all international engagements."

Canada's Defence Minister David McGuinty 

 

"In Ukraine, the Azov Battalion has recruited foreign fighters motivated by white supremacy and neo-Nazi beliefs, including many from the West, to join its ranks and receive training, indoctrination and instruction in irregular warfare."

Soufan Center

A member of the Azov Brigade (far right) takes a break during Canadian military leadership training at the Royal Military College Saint-Jean in Quebec. The training ran from Jan. 13 to Feb. 5, 2026. Photo by SUPPLIED

 

It would appear that a member of the Azov Brigade had been in training at the Royal Military College Saint-Jean in Quebec from January 13 to February 5, 2026 for leadership training, according to Canadian military personnel who had made contact with an Ottawa journalist specializing in military affairs. The Azov soldier's presence raised objections by Canadian Forces personnel who immediately on realizing the situation, relayed their objections to Canadian military officials. Their objections were ignored.

 

According to Kened Sadiku, a spokesperson for the Department of National Defence, Ukraine had been told explicitly not to forward members of the Azov Brigade to Canadian military training. Despite which, while identifying the presence of  the Azov soldier among the non-commissioned member leadership training program, authorities in the Canadian Forces allowed the man to continue his training.  "Given that fewer than seven days remained in the course and the individual had effectively completed the training, it was determined that the individual would be permitted to graduate."

 

A new report from an American university says far-right extremists in Ukraine’s military have bragged they received training from the Canadian Forces and other NATO nations. Photo by ANATOLII STEPANOV /GETTY

 

Because of its links to the far-right and neo-Nazis, the United States Congress in 2018 banned the use of U.S. funds in providing arms, training and other assistance to the Azov Brigade. Then-U.S. President Biden in 2024 lifted the ban for Azov, considered highly effective on the battlefield, defending Ukraine from President Putin's 'special military operation'.  In recognition of the unit's far-right associations, however, the Canadian Forces had a strict policy distancing itself from the Azov Brigade.

 

DND spokesperson Nick Drescher Brown a year ago noted that First Corps Azov was an established unit incorporated within the National Guard of Ukraine under the Ministry of the Interior. "It is important to note that such meetings [as when Azov personnel met with Canadian military personnel for a "friendly and open dialogue"] do not constitute endorsement of a particular individual or organization's position or values". Previously, Canadian military officers and senior DND personnel warned of Azov's neo-Nazi links. 

 

Canadian links to Azov had "dogged us for years", noted Lt. Col. Andrew Salloum, in 2022. "It's true that Azov was brought into the NGU [National Guard of Ukraine], but we don't train them because they are fanatics and we don't share their values."  Canada's Joint Task Force Ukraine produced a briefing on the Azov in 2017 that acknowledged its links to Nazi ideology. "Multiple members of Azov have described themselves as Nazis", warned the Canadian officers in their briefing.

 

In 2020 in Ukraine, it was reported that Canadian military personnel trained both members of the Azov unit and at least one Ukrainian soldier wearing the crest of a Nazi SS unit from the Second World War. Despite that the Azov Battalion was formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military, the battalion is known to have cultivated a relationship with members of the Atomwaffen Division, a U.S.-based neo-Nazi terrorist network. 

 

A news broadcast by German ZDF station showed soldiers of the Ukraine Azov Battalion with Nazi symbols on their helmets. Photo by Files /ZDF station

 

"This  unit has a history of affiliations with the far right and Nazi [elements]. What doesn't the Canadian military understand about that?"

"It's not Russian propaganda, far from it. These people are neo-Nazis."

"There is an element of the ultra-right in Ukraine and it's absurd to ignore it."

Efraim Zuroff, Israeli historian 

A Doomed Final Stand: Mariupol

The Telegraph

"When he proposed to me, I couldn't refuse We've been going out for three years, and I was hoping we'd get married anyway, but not for another year or two. The war, though, is speeding up our lives, and our time together now is shrinking."

"A female Azov fighter who was a trained lawyer acted as a witness."

"The day before, she had lost her own husband in the fighting, but she drew up the documents for our wedding anyway."

"We had no ceremony, no dresses or suits, and afterward the Russians attacked again. We had cluster bombs for our wedding instead of fireworks."

"He'd lost 20 kilos and looked gaunt, plus two of his comrades that I knew had died. At that point he began saying that he could die any day. He'd aged as well -- he looks 45 now, and inside he says he feels 100 years old."

"It is all very well for the UN to focus on civilians, but soldiers like my husband have risked their lives to defend Mariupol. They deserve some protection too."

Nataliia Zarytska, 36, Kyiv, Ukraine

The Telegraph "We got married while he was in the bunker"

 

Her husband is among the 2,000 fighters estimated to be left in Mariupol in the sprawling, now mostly destroyed steelworks factory's underground maze, holding out against the Russian troops ordered by Vladimir Putin to starve them out of the Azovstal plant. It was to be sealed so tightly that no one could enter or exit: "not a fly can get past". The tunnels have now been cleared of the hundreds of Ukrainian civilians who had taken shelter within from the non-stop Russian artillery and bombs.

A United Nations special mission had managed to evacuate all the remaining civilians, bringing them to safety. In the process, negotiating with the Russian military time and time again to respect the need to refrain from interfering with a humanitarian corridor to safety. Just as often as safe evacuation plans had buses, even taxis full of evacuees fleeing the conflict to safety, the Russian military managed to upend the plans by failing the agreement, forcing cancellations.

Now, at last, it is only the remaining fighters, most with the Azov Battalion, but others as well, left in the tunnels which Russian troops have now also entered, deploying for face-to-face combat. The Ukrainian militia fighters have had to cope with a scarcity of food, ammunition, water and medicine. Among their numbers are hundreds who are injured, whose untreated wounds are beginning to turn gangrenous and if they endure and somehow live, they will have to face amputation.

Among the fighters, one of the Azov Battalion members is a young man, Bogdan Semenets, who has been on the front lines of eastern Ukraine facing off against ethnic Russian Ukrainian separatists for the past five years. Within the Azovstal factory's subterranean depths a deadlined offer was twice posted and each time ignored, for the Ukrainian fighters to surrender, and they would have their lives spared. Semenets had few illusions; to trust the Kremlin's mercy was an exercise in futility. 

He was prepared to save a bullet for himself rather than surrender. "Better our commanders order us to kill ourselves than we give ourselves up", he wrote to Nataliia. Bogdan sent Nataliia a text asking would she marry him? "Yes", she responded. And so, on April 17 the two exchanged wedding vows online, the ceremony officiated by Bogdan's commanding officer who under military law could legally perform marriages.

Each sent the other signed wedding consent forms through the Telegram messaging channel. His was handwritten, bearing his commander's official stamp. They had originally met  through an introduction by a mutual friend. He was fighting at the time with Azov against the Russians in the Donbas region. They would manage to see one another whenever he was on leave. They shared a mutual interest in literature. The Russian-American author Ayn Rand one of their favourites, for her critiques of life under Soviet rule.

Nataliia hadn't heard from Bogdan through March into early April, after the war began on February 24. And then a flurry of communications caught up to her finally on April 9. And she was shocked to see how aged and thin he appeared. Last week, she among other wives of Azov fighters took part in a demonstration in Kyiv, where they pleaded for the Ukraine government and others to help save their husbands' lives.

They believed that if the international community would exert greater pressure on Russia, the Kremlin could be persuaded to permit safe passage for the fighters out of the Azovstal plant. Yesterday, a video conference surfaced from the factory where Azov commanders said they felt "abandoned" by NATO, from which they had been refused the supply of weapons. They said that 25,000 people had died in the fighting in Mariupol.

Finally, Bogdan's latest and perhaps last message to his wife was received this past weekend. Where he reminded Nataliia that this could be his final communication with her. "It can't go on like this much longer. We may not meet again. XXX", he wrote to his wife.

Nataliia Zarytska, with a photo of Bogdan Semenets, whom she had been dating for three years before she accepted his proposal   Credit: Heathcliff O’Malley for The Telegraph

A Pact With The Devil

"It is unacceptable for our armed forces to be emboldening neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine, or any other country, through the provision of CAF training."

"This is an issue fundamental to the purpose of Canada’s forces and to the respect we owe our veterans – who sacrificed so much to defeat fascism in Europe."

"We urge the Department of National Defence to immediately launch an investigation into the evidence that has been revealed by the George Washington University study and to develop new policies and procedures to ensure that all foreign trainees receive some type of background check to eliminate the possibility of neo-Nazi or other extremist affiliation before receiving training from Canadian forces."

Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, Canada

October 18, 2021 

"The Canadian government didn't do its due diligence. It's the responsibility of the Canadian defence ministry to know exactly who they are training."

"There is no question that there are neo-Nazis in different forms in Ukraine, whether they are in the Azov regiment or other organizations."

Efraim Zuroff, Holocaust scholar, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Israel

April 12, 2022

EVGENIYA MAKSYMOVA | Credit: AFP

 

The world is watching with bated breath and  hoping that by some miraculous intervention, Ukrainian resolve and the courage of its people, the defiance and practised skills of its military will manage to succeed in pushing back the advance of the Russian military from Ukrainian territory. A vastly out-numbered Ukrainian military, defending itself against the superior advanced technology of the Russian military has seen courage in real time, as Ukrainian forces steadfastly held out against an immense Russian convoy planning to enter and occupy the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

Ukraine's charismatic president has minced no words in calling upon Western alliances and Ukraine's European neighbours to come to its aid, invaded by a malign Russian Federation's president who claims to be 'liberating' his neighbour from the malign forces of evil personified in the presence of neo-Nazi fighting volunteers committed to fascism and infused with antisemitism and overall racist values that are contemptful of minorities. A contempt so deep and malicious they volunteered during WWII to act alongside Nazi SS Panzer units whose focus was to advance the Holocaust aspirations of genocide.

Ukraine has a shameful  history of antisemitism and was complicit with the Nazi occupiers in destroying vast numbers of Jewish lives. But so too was every other Eastern European country under occupation, from Lithuania to Hungary to Poland. And nor was Western Europe exceptional in shielding Jews from the Third Reich's 'Final Solution'. Vichy France was a collaborationist country, Italy was an Axis nation, and Holland surrendered most of its Jews to their grim fate.

 

 SERGEY BOBOK | Credit: AFP via Getty Images

As a fierce fighting group whose loyalty as committed nationalists Ukraine depends upon in its defence from Russian aggression, the former president of Ukraine welcomed the Azov Battalion and a number of other fascist Ukrainian militias into the ranks of its institutional national military. The current president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy knows his history very well, as a son of Holocaust survivors. He well understands his country and its ongoing flirtation with fascism. But it is his country as much as it is the fascists' and it is certainly not Russia's geography in a war of cultural/political/territorial imperative.

Canada, which celebrates itself as a bastion of Liberal Democracy, has among its citizenry the third largest Ukrainian population after Ukraine itself and the diaspora contingent in Russia. Canada's Liberal Party currently in power under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a virtue-signalling country portraying itself as an enemy of injustice and a champion of human rights. When Ukraine appealed to the world community for aid in his country's time of desperate need, he appealed to NATO and EU countries particularly for military equipment.

When ethnic-Russian Ukrainian rebels separated the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine from the West-leaning government in Kyiv, in a conflict that created their self-styled Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, where Moscow surreptitiously sent its military to support the separatists, and finally marched across the border between Russia and Ukraine to claim the Crimean Peninsula as its own territory, appeals for military aid failed to resonate; no other countries relished the prospect of clashing in conflict with Russia.

Now that the Kremlin has decided it was time to finally destroy Ukraine as a nation, military gear is being freed up for Ukraine; too little, too late. In response to the ongoing separatist conflict and the Crimean crisis, military trainers were made available under NATO to teach modern warfare techniques to the Ukrainian military, and Canada had a contingent of trainers preparing the military in Ukraine for future defence. It was these trainers and those among the Ukrainian military known for their white-supremacist fascism who were among those being trained that caught the eye of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

 

Al Mayadeen English

The Canadian government, through the Canadian Forces denies it has an obligation to know of the presence of neo-Nazis among those that were being trained by Canadian military experts. Despite the presence of one Ukrainian soldier who proudly wore the crest of a Nazi SS unit -- the insignia of the WWII Ukrainian fascists who joined the Nazis, on his uniform -- and the presence of known fascists in the Azov regiment, an all-inclusive training continued. 

The meaning of the insignia was not lost on the Canadian trainers. All Canadian military members engaged in training Ukrainian troops were exposed to information enabling them to recognize patches and insignia associated with right-wing extremism. In theory, should Canadian soldiers suspect Ukrainian counterpart trainees to be possessed of racist values or belonging to such organizations, the trainees are removed. But no burden of proof is on the Canadian Armed Forces beyond a reasonable doubt to act as theorized.

"Multiple members of Azov have described themselves as Nazis", a briefing note on the Azov Battalion acknowledged, produced by Canadian officers with Canada's elite Joint Task Force in 2017. The American Congress banned U.S. funds from reaching Ukraine to provide arms, training or other assistance to the Azov Battalion in view of its links to the far-right and neo-Nazis. Both the UN and Amnesty International accuse the unit of conducting human rights violations.

"There is an element of the ultra-right in Ukraine and it's absurd to ignore it", repeated Efraim Zuroff. The impetus is there to ignore it, since its presence in Ukraine is cited sanctimoniously by Vladimir Putin as justification for his invasion of Ukraine. In the context of Ukraine's moving cri de coeur, the emphasis is, rightfully so, on its preservation, its right to exist as an independent nation, to choose its future course. And the need to help in whatever way is possible, short of igniting the fuse for a Third World War.

This situation is what is meant by a dilemma of contradiction and making a pact with the devil.

"The call for Ukraine’s defence has been met by a wide section of Ukrainian society, from the young to the old. Volunteer battalions include anarchists, gay go-go dancers, imams and Hasidic Jews, for example. In Irpin, I met a lesbian territorial defence volunteer named Anna, who was fighting alongside a native Georgian. To ignore these people and concentrate solely on Azov does little to serve Ukrainian civil society, which faces an existential threat at the hands of Russian fascism".

"That’s where this argument moves from the absurd to the obscene. Vladimir Putin is a major sponsor of far-right political parties across Europe, and is close to a militia (the Wagner Group) that is involved in military action around the world and has been linked to white supremacy movements. Under Putin, Russia has regressed into a totalitarian fascist regime. He threatens Ukraine not because it has a far-right element, but because Ukraine is a growing, sovereign liberal democracy that he can no longer control."

:Russia’s information war focuses on Ukraine’s neo-Nazis because it seeks to take control of the narrative. It wants to dehumanise Ukrainians to the point that when a bomb is fired on a theatre full of children in Mariupol, it can blame the atrocity on Azov and avoid international condemnation and accountability. This is a tried-and-tested model that Russia has perfected in Syria over the past decade."

Oz Katerji, The New Statesman

Members of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces during training at a former asphalt factory on the outskirts of Kyiv. Photo by Ethan Swope/Bloomberg via Getty Images