By Scott Taylor
Last Wednesday, the Ottawa Citizen headline read "Officer with Ukrainian unit linked to neo-Nazis received military training in Canada. Sources say Defence Minister David McGuinty was unaware the Azov Brigade soldier had been invited to RMC Saint-Jean."
While admittedly a tad on the wordy side, this headline revelation was somehow not as surprising as it should be.
According to the Citizen story, a non-commissioned officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine's (AFU) notorious Azov Brigade recently completed a leadership course at the College Militaire Royale in St. Jean Quebec.
Those familiar with the operational taskings of the Canadian Armed Forces will be aware that Canada has been training the AFU since 2016 as part of NATO's Operation Reassurance. That training took place in Ukraine until the Russian invasion in February 2022 at which point the Canadian trainers were withdrawn.
After a brief suspension, the Canadian training of the AFU resumed albeit in the UK and Poland. That mission continues to this day and thus far, Canada has trained some 30,000 AFU soldiers. So it is no shock that Canadians are training Ukrainians.
What makes this story newsworthy is that the Ukrainian on the three week leadership course in Quebec is a member of the Azov Brigade.
This unit was founded as a militia in 2014 following the Maidan uprising in Kiev and the subsequent separatist clashes in the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine. The core element were soccer fans in the city of Mariupol which sits astride the Sea of Azov, hence the name. Azov was first a battalion, then a regiment and it is now a brigade.
From the outset Azov has been regarded as a Neo-Nazi organization with a fanatical nationalist ideology. International news outlets flagged the warning signs such as Azov's symbols being rooted in actual Nazi WW2 images. A number of Azov members openly flaunted swastikas.
Despite the fact that Azov was officially incorporated into the Ukraine National Guard in {date} it remains a defiantly independent, stand alone unit.
In 2018, in response to this notorious unit's well publicized Neo-Nazi links, US Congress banned the transfer of any funding, arms or training for the Azov battalion.
In 2017, Canada’s Joint Task Force Ukraine produced their own assessment of the Azov Battalion, acknowledging their adherence to Nazi ideology. “Multiple members of Azov have described themselves as Nazis,” the Canadian officers warned in a briefing note subsequently obtained by the Ottawa Citizen.
Nevertheless in June 2018 a Canadian colonel and diplomats met with members of the Azov Battalion. Naturally, the Azov Battalion posted images of the meeting on their social media pages and stated "Canadians express hope for further fruitful co-operation." That event remained unreported until November 2021 when the Ottawa Citizen headline read "Canadian Officials who met with Ukrainian unit linked to neo-Nazis feared exposure by news media documents."
So meeting with known Nazis was okay as long as the media doesn't find out. Got it.
Once the story broke the department of National Defence issued a very clear statement. It read "The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces are strongly opposed to the glorification of Nazism and any form of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, intolerance and extremism. Our official position remains that we are not -nor will we be providing support to Azov and affiliated entities."
In the wake of the Russian invasion in February 2022, Azov proved to be a formidable fighting force. They were driven by their ideological fanaticism and also the fear of their fate if captured by the Russians.
For many observers, Azov's battlefield tenacity somehow atoned for the basic fact that at heart they are still Neo-Nazis.
The Canadian Armed Forces however did not waiver in their resolve. In March 2022, Lt. Col. André Salloum noted in an email that questions about Canadian links to Azov had “dogged us for years. It’s true that Azov was brought into the NGU (National Guard of Ukraine), but we don’t train them because they are fanatics, and we don’t share their values,” Salloum added. Salloum’s comments were reported in 2024 by an on-line investigative publication, The Maple, which obtained the records through an Access to Information request.
Which brings us full circle to the case of an Azov non-commissioned officer taking a leadership course at a Canadian military academy in Quebec. For the record, objections to the presence of the Azov soldier on their course were submitted by Canadian service members to their leadership. These objections were ignored by the military leadership. To their credit those soldiers tipped off the Ottawa Citizen complete with photo evidence of the individual openly wearing his Azov Brigade patch in the classroom.
According to DND's spokesperson Kened Sadiku, Canada has been explicit in telling Ukraine not to send Azov personnel on such courses. Sadiku also said that by the time headquarters were made aware of the situation the Azov member only had seven days remaining on the three week course, so they decided to simply let him finish.
For his part Minister of National defence David McGuinty, stated to the Ottawa Citizen, said “at no point has Canada’s mandate included training members of the Azov Battalion. We have reinforced our policy to prevent any recurrence and remain firmly opposed to Nazism, racism, and all forms of extremism while promoting human rights, and the rule of law in all international engagements.”
This statement smacks of Orwellian logic wherein the official emphatic denials are the opposite of what is happening. We did just train an Azov member. the Ukrainians did send an Azov member to Canada and given the lack of repercussions will likely do so again.
Kudos to those soldiers who blew the whistle and are probably now in danger of being investigated as being 'disloyal' to the CAF for embarrassing the institution with its own hypocrisy.
