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Thursday, November 27, 2014

Nazis in AZOV battalion?

(NOTE: for archive only. Account now deleted and as such flag removed!!!!)

This photo appeared on the net:


Like in this tweet:
And of course it started a lot of discussion whether this photo was real or not.

It comes from this vk-account from Oleg Pyenya.
Link to the photo.
Link to the original photo.

On his timeline there is an interview with him stating that his name is Олег Пионтковский.


When in his VK-page showing the photo, you hover over his name, it shows where the author is:

So this means the OWNER of this page Oleg Penya, indicates that he is on the photo.

This guy has many photos picturing him giving Nazi-salutes:


Link to original photo.

Or this one with nazi-flag:


Link to original photo.

Photo showing Oleg on a AZOV-truck:

Photo showing Oleg at Ukrainian checkpost:

Photo of Oleg with fellow soldiers:

So, there should be no doubt that Oleg is a member of the AZOV-team AND a nazi-sympathizer.

The BIG question is: If this photo is fake, then WHY does AZOV-member and Nazi-sympathizer Oleg Pyenya have it on his profile?


Is it fake?

Sergey Ukrainets has a photo on his VK profile that shows the same building as the first photo:

Link to original photo.

It also shows the truck with the ZU-23.

Another photo shows the truck with the blue canvas over it:

Other photos in this guys profile show AZOV battle groups and some with Nazi-salutes too!

So all these things indicate that it is a LEGITIMATE photo from an AZOV-group and NOT some reenactment of (pro)Russians pretending to be AZOV-members.


Has the photo been edited?
Fotoforensics.com is a website that helps determine whether photos had been edited. I uploaded a photo and THOUGHT it indicated to be edited:
Yet the founder of the website responded to this:
I had not been sending the original photo here.
This is what Fotoforensics shows with the originally posted photo:


This is the link to the Fotoforensics photo.

It means all other such comparisons going around are worthless, because it has to be done with the most original photo.

The Nazi-cross DOES look very different, similar as the black areas on the faces. So that might indeed be an indication that that flag has been edited in?

To be sure I asked @hackerfactor. Waiting for an answer...

UPDATE
The founder of Fotoforensic says the Nazi-falg is fake.
(Probably he meant to write: "Found a higher quality version.")


Now that we can safely conclude that the NAZI-flag was edited in later, the question still is why Oleg Pyenya, who is a MEMBER of AZOV has it on his profile!!
Oleg is also a member of this far-right organisation by the way.


Conclusion
Yes, there are Nazi-admirers in AZOV, which by the way is no longer a volunteer group but has become a Ukrainian army unit.
So yes, there are Nazi-admirers in the Ukrainian army. It does NOT mean the Ukrainian army is a Nazi-army AT ALL.

The big difference with for instance dog-eater Alexey Milchakov is that Oleg is DEFENDING his country and Alexey is ATTACKING and INVADING a neighboring country.

As every European country there are far-right organisations and people, so in Ukraine too. Russia is even FUNDING these organisations in European countries!!!

That makes you wonder: would Putin also (have) be(en) funding (some) Far Rights in Ukraine?

The fact that some Nazi-admirers are in the Ukrainian army and openly showing their allegiance on social media is not good at all. It will be/food for the Russian trolls and propaganda. It may even influence Western opinion in a bad way.

The only good thing that can be said about it, is that at least Oleg is willing to defend his country against the Barbarians. As long as they will not commit the same atrocities as what they are fighting against...

TIP
Since AZOV is a Ukrainian army unit now, they should fire soldiers that so obviously and openly sympathize with Nazis!

UPDATE 28-11
Olegs profile has been completely deleted. That's how you do it! Hooray for AZOV and for Ukraine!!!!




UPDATE 29-11
And there you go! Russian TV is of course using this faked! photo in their propagnada:
Oleg should be fired from the Ukrainian army for this.


Thanks to @vik2rsk for finding the sources.

Posted by Ukraine@war at

1 comment:

  1. anagogistisNovember 27, 2014 at 5:44 AM

    Seems like a fake. The guy is a nationalist etc. but they don't use swastika as their symbol as far as I know (maybe for fun sometimes).
    Anyway, as you said, this doesn't mean or prove anything. There are thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and all of them have different political views. It's not surprising that few of them can be Nazis or communists or racists etc. But we should not generalize based on few people...

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