General Valery Zaluzhny is the latest and highest-ranking in a long line of Ukrainian service members photographed bearing Nazi insignia
General Valery Zaluzhny, seen in a photo posted to Twitter on October 9, 2022 © Twitter / @CinC_AFU
General Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, posted a photo to Twitter of himself wearing a swastika bracelet. Although Kiev dismisses accusations of Nazism within its ranks as “Russian propaganda,” its soldiers are often photographed wearing the symbols of the Third Reich.
In a post on Thursday, Zaluzhny declared that Ukraine’s struggle against Russia is on a scale that “the world has not seen since the Second World War.” It was not immediately clear which side of the struggle he was referring to.
Adorning Zaluzhny’s wrist in the photo is a bracelet made up of multiple tiles, at least one of which features a swastika. The photo itself has been circulating online since at least March.
На нашій землі триває боротьба, масштабів якої світ не бачив із часів Другої світової. Ми не маємо права перекласти цю війну на наших дітей. Ворога потрібно знищити тут і зараз. І ми це можемо зробити.#valeriizaluzhnyipic.twitter.com/8PsVOD9iiN
— Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (@CinC_AFU) October 6, 2022
A close-up image of General Valerii Zaluzhnyi’s swastika bracelet, taken from a photo posted to Twitter on October 9, 2022
Zaluzhny is not the first Ukrainian service member seen in Nazi insignia. Apart from the notorious and now-destroyed Azov regiment of the Ukrainian military (which originated as a neo-Nazi militia), regular Ukrainian service members have been seen wearing the ‘death’s head’, or ‘totenkopf’, the symbol of the 3rd SS Panzer Division, and have also daubed swastikas on their vehicles.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has posted an image of a Ukrainian soldier wearing the standard of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, a photo of an artilleryman wearing the death’s head, and a photo of one of his own bodyguards wearing the same ‘totenkopf’ patch. Two of these pictures were posted to Zelensky’s official Instagram account.
Russian President Vladimir Putin cited the outsized influence of neo-Nazi groups on Ukraine’s military and government as one of the factors influencing his decision to send troops into the country in February. In addition to protecting the Donbass region and demilitarizing Ukraine, Putin vowed to “denazify” the country.
Despite the evidence, Ukrainian officials and some Western media outlets have described accusations of nao-Nazism as “myths” and “Russian propaganda.”
