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Accused by Russia of being linked to a neo-Nazi movement, the Azov battalion has created a new logo using the codes of the Ukrainian national emblem. But the wolfsangel is still part of the visual identity of the regiment.
On Twitter, pro-Russian Internet users believe they have unmasked a communication operation carried out by the Azov regiment. “Azov is no longer neo-Nazi, they changed their logo”, “The Azov battalion removed a neo-Nazi symbol from its badge”. Behind these tweets, the same photo: soldiers in rank wearing a marked patch “Azov Kharkiv special forces”. Under this name, a logo. Three swords, arranged in the shape of a trident, the national symbol of Ukraine. The traditional logo of the Azov regiment, known as the wolfsangel and which is a reference to Nazi imagery, has disappeared.
So are the soldiers of Azov trying to get rid of this symbol with a cumbersome past? The source of this information is the British newspaper Times, taken up on the networks. The author recounts the ceremony of creation of a new unit of the Azov regiment in Kharkiv, on May 29th. Faced with the absence of the wolfsangel on the badges distributed, he asserts: “The Azov Battalion has removed a neo-Nazi symbol from its insignia, which until then helped feed Russian propaganda”.
In fact, there is no indication that Azov is abandoning this symbol. Both on the regiment’s official website and on the regiment’s YouTube channel, the wolfsangel is still prominently displayed. In full photos of the event posted by a local executive, she even appears directly on a member of the regiment’s t-shirt. The logo on the crest is just an alternative symbol of Azov, as shown in a propaganda video. It shows a very similar emblem. This is that of another special forces unit based in kyiv.
In reality, it’s hard for Azov to let go of these far-right symbols, despite their storied past. “You have to distinguish things. You have people who display this symbol out of ideological support. These are symbols that have become extremely ‘mainstreamed’ from 2014. They are in fact a desire both to provoke Russia and at the same time on a fairly aesthetic side in accordance with this somewhat military archetype”, explains Adrien Nonjon, researcher at Inalco and specialist in Ukraine and the post-Soviet far-right. And the war is unlikely to induce the Azov Battalion to break away from its far-right ideas and symbols. By making them tools of resistance, it could even strengthen them.