Ukraine’s Azov hails US lifting weapons ban

Ukraine’s Azov brigade on Tuesday welcomed Washington’s decision to allow it access to US military aid, lifting a decade-long ban imposed over the unit’s initial hardline nationalist ideology.

The brigade has near cult-status in Ukraine, elevated by its weeks-long defence of the Azovstal plant in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol at the start of the war.

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But the unit is blasted by Russia as a group of neo-Nazis and ultranationalists.

The US State Department said it had conducted a “thorough review” of the current Azov brigade and found “no evidence” of human rights violations.

Washington also said the current Azov brigade is different from the initial militia unit, meaning it can access US-supplied weapons.

“This is a new page in the history of our brigade,” Azov said on social media.

The original “Azov battalion” was blighted by accusations that some members held openly far-right and extremist views.

But Washington said that militia was “disbanded in 2015” and a vetting process of the new brigade under the Leahy laws — which bar US funding to units implicated in human rights violations — had cleared it.

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In a statement, a State Department spokesman also noted Azov’s “heroic role” in the 2022 battle for Mariupol.

Moscow on Tuesday criticised the lifting of the ban and repeated its claims against the group.

“Such a sudden change in Washington’s position shows that it will do anything to suppress Russia… even flirting with neo-Nazis,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Azov supporters and members have repeatedly rejected those accusations and say the former militia has shed its far-right origins.

“The lie about Azov, which the Kremlin regime has been spreading in the West for years, received a devastating strike today,” Azov said Tuesday.

Azov, now part of Ukraine’s National Guard, had long advocated for the ban to be lifted, a decision which comes with its fighters struggling with supply shortages.

© Agence France-Presse