It seemed like an odd way to spend a Saturday.
Watching the blood sports at a festival for far-right extremists.
This was the summer of 2019, and I had gone to Ukraine to learn more about these groups.
From the crowds, one thing seemed pretty clear about them:
They weren't bothered by the fact that this event was organized by the Azov movement,
a far-right group that has increasingly been linked to violence around the world.
The shooter is linked to a 74-page manifesto filled with white supremacist rhetoric.
FBI agents say he expressed a desire to travel to Ukraine to fight with a
far-right paramilitary group.
At least one member of an American hate group also trained in Ukraine,
with Azov Battalion.
According to the FBI domestic terrorists killed 39 people in fiscal year 2019
making it the most deadly year for domestic terrorism since the 1995 Oklahoma city bombing.
The threat of white nationalism has evolved since Oklahoma city where a domestic terrorist used
a truck bomb to kill at least 168 people. Police don't tend to see such terrorists as lone wolves
acting in isolation anymore. It's become clear to law enforcement that these attackers often have
links to a global network, one with common goals and a shared ideology.
We are looking very hard
at white supremacists or Neo-Nazis here connecting through social media online with like-minded
individuals overseas and in some cases actually traveling overseas to train.
Over the last few years experts in violent extremism have grown especially alarmed about the Azov movement
The group emerged from the revolution that swept across Ukraine in 2014 and it has
gotten a lot stronger amid the ongoing war with pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine
The fighting in that region has become kind of ideal breeding ground for militias like Azov.
At their public events one thing that surprised me was how many Ukrainians tend to see Azov
not as militants or extremists but as war heroes. In Kiev, the capital, I watched an independence day
parade where veterans of the Azov Battalion marched alongside other volunteer militias
surrounded by cheering crowds who thanked them for defending Ukraine against Russia.
But even at the march there were signs of the far-right ideology that's so common inside Azov
The symbols on their flags have been especially controversial Azov says it combines the letters
I and N for "idea of nation" but extremism experts see it as an emblem of Nazism.
The official symbol of Azov it's a version of Wolfsangel. It was one of the symbols of one of the SS divisions during
World War II.It is one of more or less usual symbols for Neo-Nazi groups all over the world.
And it's not just about their symbols when it was founded in 2014, Azov drew many of its commanders and
recruits from Ukraine's most notorious far-right groups, including outright Neo-Nazis.
We basically recruited everyone who could hold weapons in their hand when Ukrainian state was paralyzed
and the defense of Ukrainian state was totally in the hand of Ukrainian volunteers. So there were many
war adventurers guys who believed that they're are on kind of an ideological tour
to save maybe the future of the west and so on and so forth so--
The future of the white race?
Yes, yes.
Azov's paramilitary wing is now a major fighting force with its own bases and
training grounds near the front lines of the war against pro-Russian forces. After the veterans'
parade in Kiev I interviewed Andriy Biletsky who founded the Azov movement in 2014.
Azov's leaders have also tried to break into politics. They failed to win any seats in
Parliament during the most recent elections in 2019, but their plans in Ukraine are ambitious.
What worries officials in the west is Azov's recruitment strategy. It's tried hard to build
friendships with far-right groups around the world especially in the U.S. and Europe.
During my visit in 2019, I spent a day at one of the biggest recruitment events in Azov's history.
Thousands of people showed up for a day of fighting sports and blatant propaganda.
There were Neo-Nazi symbols tattoos and posters all over the place,
and many in the crowd seem pretty receptive to Azov's far-right ideology.
Events like this also tend to attract recruits from abroad. One of the ones I met was named
Robin, who just arrived in Ukraine from Sweden, where he told me he's wanted for hate crimes.
This is so hard to explain the surroundings for someone who's watching this you know, it's surreal.
It's like, I don't know, it's like something you read about, the great Germany before, you know, in
the 1920s. It's a revival of the inter-european soul. And it's all happening here in Ukraine.
Afterward we rode back to the Azov base in northern Kiev, where Azov commanders had allowed Robin to stay
as a potential recruit.
We are aryans and we will rise again. That's a-- that's a way of
life, you know, and after the war in Germany we went back to the benches, uh school benches,
but now he will rise again.
Are they Neo-Nazis as an organization? No. Have they had Neo-Nazis
in their organization? I would say look at the U.S. Army and you would find Neo-Nazis as well.
Dave is an American expat and U.S. Military veteran who has volunteered to help Ukraine's national guard,
and he's met a lot of the recruits who'd come to join Azov.
You only need one of these guys to kind
of go home and and uh commit an act of terrorism to then really damage the reputation of Ukraine
in the eyes of the world, right? So that, I mean, that's really a risk that Ukraine faces. Do you
think they're taking it seriously enough?
Now? Yes.
A few weeks later, Robin, the Swede
I met at that festival wrote me that he was going to the front lines to join the fight
With recruits like this, it's little wonder that u.s officials see Azov as a threat.
Experts point out that the pace of white supremacist terrorism has intensified with new incidents
frequently filling the headlines. 22 gunned down at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Two killed near
a synagogue in Halle, Germany. Nine more in an attack on two shisha bars near Frankfurt,
and a series of arrests exposing far-right terror plots across the U.S. and Europe.
One tally reported an increase of 320 percent in such attacks in western countries between 2014 and 2019