(PARA)MILITARY UNIT »BLACK CORPS« (»AZOV«) AS THE MOST FAMOUS POLITICAL-MILITARY EXPRESSION OF EXTREME UKRAINIAN NATIONALISM
Abstract
After Ukraine gained independence in 1991 and a period of long-term equidistance between the East and West, Ukrainian politics definitively turned towards the West in the period after the »Maidan« events in the winter of 2013/14, when pro-Western – liberal, but also nationalist political forces willing to separate Ukraine from the Russian Federation in every respect came to power (for the second time). This was also the beginning of open tensions with the Russian Federation, and then came the Russian annexation of Crimea and the beginning of military conflicts in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. The newly declared policy of Ukraine, led by Ukrainian liberal and right-wing politicians, was the »decommunization of the country« and the »nationalization of the nation«, which opened a wide space for extreme right-wing Ukrainian political movements and paramilitary groups, among which over time the most exposed one became the Kharkiv group Black Corps (later the battalion, the Azov regiment and finally the brigade ‒ the Twelfth Brigade of the National Guard, or the Third Independent Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine). The aim of this paper is to systematize the previous knowledge, i. e. to present the history, ideology and activities of the (para)military unit „Black Corps” (later »Azov«), as the paradigm of the (para)military-political form of developing the contemporary extreme Ukrainian nationalism.
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