If you are like most people in the western world, you are strongly rooting for one side or the other to win the war in Ukraine.  But how did you decide which side to root for?  Could it be possible that your opinions have been greatly shaped by mainstream news coverage of the conflict?  I am going to share some things with you in this article that are deeply disturbing, and they are likely to alter how you view the war.  But before I get into the details, I want to be very open about the fact that I do not consider either the Russians or the Ukrainians to be “the good guys” in this saga.  The Russians repeatedly lied to us about their intentions, I am very upset that Vladimir Putin ordered this invasion, and I am entirely convinced that when push comes to shove the Russians will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against the United States.  Needless to say, I am not going to refer to anyone that is likely to nuke my country someday as “the good guys”.

Right now, the mainstream media is working tirelessly to frame the Ukrainians as “the good guys”, but that isn’t true either.

For years, Ukraine has been crawling with gangs, militias and political organizations that are recognized internationally as being either Nazis or neo-Nazis.  Perhaps the most famous of these is the Azov Special Operations Detachment.  The following comes from Wikipedia…

Azov Special Operations Detachment (Ukrainian: Окремий загін спеціального призначення «Азов», romanized: Okremyi zahin spetsialnoho pryznachennia “Azov”), often known as Azov Detachment, Azov Regiment (Ukrainian: Полк Азов, romanized: Polk Azov), or Azov Battalion (until September 2014), is a right-wing extremist^[1] and neo-Nazi^[2][3][4] unit of the National Guard of Ukraine,^[5][6][7] based in Mariupol, in the Azov Sea coastal region.^[8] It has been fighting Russian separatist forces in the Donbas War. Azov initially formed as a volunteer militia in May 2014.^[9] It saw its first combat experience recapturing Mariupol from pro-Russian separatists in June 2014.^[5] On 12 November 2014, Azov was incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine, and since then all members are contract soldiers serving in the National Guard.^[10]

Even though the Ukrainian government knew that Azov was full of Nazis, it had absolutely no problem incorporating the unit into the main armed forces of the country in 2014.

In 2015, a reporter for USA Today interviewed a drill sergeant for the group that admitted that about half of the soldiers in Azov are Nazis…

A drill sergeant who would identify himself only as Alex wore a patch depicting Thor’s Hammer, an ancient Norse symbol appropriated by neo-Nazis, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

In an interview with USA TODAY, he admitted he is a Nazi and said with a laugh that no more than half his comrades are fellow Nazis. He said he supports strong leadership for Ukraine, like Germany during World War II, but opposes the Nazis’ genocide against Jews.

In recent years, Azov has recruited large numbers of neo-Nazis and white supremacists from the United States, Germany, the UK, Brazil, Sweden and elsewhere.

And now that Russia has invaded, neo-Nazis and white supremacists from all over the globe have been seeking to travel to Ukraine to join Azov and other paramilitary units.  The following comes from the New York Times…

Rita Katz, the director of SITE, said that numerous far-right white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups throughout Europe and North America had expressed an outpouring of support for Ukraine, including by seeking to join paramilitary units in battling Russia.

The motivation to travel to Ukraine, she said, was to gain combat training. It was also ideologically-driven, she added, since these far right groups viewed the fight against Russia as a fight against communism, clinging to World War II historical narratives, and associating modern-day Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin, with the former Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, Nazis and neo-Nazis are not just on the fringes of Ukrainian society.  One of the founders of Azov, Andriy Biletsky, went on to serve in Ukraine’s parliament…

Post-Maidan Ukraine is the world’s only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces. The Azov Battalion was initially formed out of the neo-Nazi gang Patriot of Ukraine. Andriy Biletsky, the gang’s leader who became Azov’s commander, once wrote that Ukraine’s mission is to “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade…against the Semite-led Untermenschen.” Biletsky is now a deputy in Ukraine’s parliament.

Another one of the founders of Azov, Andriy Parubiy, eventually became the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament…

Speaker of Parliament Andriy Parubiy cofounded and led two neo-Nazi organizations: the Social-National Party of Ukraine (later renamed Svoboda), and Patriot of Ukraine, whose members would eventually form the core of Azov.

And another veteran of Azov, Vadim Troyan, became one of the most important law enforcement officials in the entire nation…

The deputy minister of the Interior—which controls the National Police—is Vadim Troyan, a veteran of Azov and Patriot of Ukraine. In 2014, when Troyan was being considered for police chief of Kiev, Ukrainian Jewish leaders were appalled by his neo-Nazi background. Today, he’s deputy of the department running US-trained law enforcement in the entire nation.

The reason why men like this could rise through the ranks is because countless other key Ukrainian figures see things the same way that they do.

Anti-semitism is absolutely rampant in Ukraine, and in recent years there has been an enormous surge of Nazi-inspired violence all over the country…

The past three years saw an explosion of swastikas and SS runes on city streets, death threats, and vandalism of Holocaust memorials, Jewish centers, cemeteries, tombs, and places of worship, all of which led Israel to take the unusual step of publicly urging Kiev to address the epidemic.

Public officials make anti-Semitic threats with no repercussions. These include: a security services general promising to eliminate the zhidi (a slur equivalent to ‘kikes’); a parliament deputy going off on an anti-Semitic rant on television; a far-right politician lamenting Hitler didn’t finish off the Jews; and an ultranationalist leader vowing to cleanse Odessa of zhidi.

When the Russians say that the “denazification” of Ukraine is one of their goals, they make a legitimate point.

But the mainstream media is telling you that you must root for the Nazis and the neo-Nazis, and so I suppose that you don’t have much of a choice.

Of course the mainstream media will never show you the Nazi symbols, the Nazi salutes or the rampant abuse of minority groups.

And now that the war has started, Facebook has apparently decided that it is now perfectly okay for their users to publicly praise Azov…

FACEBOOK WILL TEMPORARILY allow its billions of users to praise the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi military unit previously banned from being freely discussed under the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, The Intercept has learned.

Once again, none of this means that I approve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, because I do not.

In fact, I have always been a very strong advocate for a diplomatic solution in the region.

But if you are going to root for the Ukrainians, you need to understand who you are rooting for.

What I have shared in this article is just the tip of the iceberg.  Unfortunately, most people in the western world will never hear about any of this because the mainstream media is keeping it very, very quiet.