How Russia Weaponized the Azov Myth: Inside the Battle Against Russia’s Longest Lie
By: Giorgio Provinciali
Live from Ukraine
Kachkivka, Ukraine — Denys “Redis” Prokopenko, now commander of the First Corps Azov of Ukraine’s National Guard, has returned to public life after Russian captivity and the months spent in Türkiye following his release. Ukraine officially brought five Azovstal commanders home from Türkiye on July 8, 2023; in February 2026, President Volodymyr Zelensky conferred the rank of brigadier general on Prokopenko.
His latest initiative targets one of Russia’s longest-running information operations: the attempt to reduce Azov to a propaganda caricature. Through AzovContraFake.com, Prokopenko invites readers to retrace the unit’s history not as an exercise in nostalgia, but as an act of information self-defense. The website presents a structured rebuttal to nine recurring myths: xenophobia, racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, alleged persecution of Russian-speakers, neo-Nazi symbolism, terrorist designation, war crimes, and supposed independence from Ukraine’s chain of command.
This matters because Putin’s entire “denazification” narrative was built to transform aggression into moral theatre. It falsely depicts Ukraine as the extremist space and Russia as the corrective force, while in reality, the accusation has functioned as a political weapon to delegitimize Ukrainian resistance. A lie repeated for twelve years is not just propaganda but also a military vulnerability, because it erodes Western confidence, delays political decisions, and gives hesitation the appearance of prudence.
The point is not to erase Azov’s complicated origins in 2014. The point is to prevent that origin from being frozen, falsified, and weaponized against the present unit. Azov is not the only one to draw this line. In June 2024, the U.S. State Department found no evidence of gross human rights violations by the 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade, said the unit had passed Leahy vetting, and noted that the composition of today’s Azov Brigade is significantly different from the militia Russia keeps invoking for propaganda purposes.
Do Azov fighters hold xenophobic, racist, or sexist positions?
The site’s answer is built on names, faces, and service records rather than slogans. It recalls soldiers and personnel of different ethnicities and religions who served in Azov throughout its history. Among the names collected by the site are Georgians, Armenians, Jews, Russians, Belarusians, Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Muslims, and women who fought, treated the wounded, documented the war, or died in combat.
It also draws a clear line between the unit and political projects linked to Andriy Biletskyi, its first commander, presenting Azov as a state military formation rather than a political movement.
Is anti-Semitism one of Azov’s cornerstones?
Anti-Semitism is one of the easiest lies to manufacture and one of the hardest to remove once it has entered public circulation. In Azov’s case, however, the charge is undone by the records of those who actually served. The website lists Jewish soldiers, medics, and supporters, and recalls the appeal made to the Knesset by Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Reuven Asman during the siege of Azovstal, urging the evacuation of Azov fighters to Israel or a third country.
Does Azov persecute Russian-speakers in Donbas?
The myth also fails geographically and linguistically. Russian propaganda has spent years pretending that Russian-speaking Ukrainians must naturally belong to Moscow’s political world. The war has proved the opposite: many of the first Ukrainians to resist Russian aggression were Russian-speaking Ukrainians themselves. The Kremlin’s mistake was to confuse language with obedience.
For centuries, imperial and Soviet power elevated Russian as the language of hierarchy, administration, and enforced cultural dominance. But being Russian-speaking in Ukraine has never meant being Russian-owned. The paradox is that the very language once used by the empire to dominate Ukraine has also been used by Ukrainians to reject the empire.
Is Azov’s symbol neo-Nazi?
The AzovContraFake site presents the symbol as the monogram of the phrase National Idea — the letters N and I — and defines that idea in civic, not racial, terms: devotion to the Ukrainian people, political freedom, democracy, pluralism, and tolerance.
Here again, the strongest argument is not visual resemblance but institutional meaning, command discipline, and actual conduct. Russia’s propaganda works by detaching the symbol from the soldiers, the unit from the state, and 2014 from everything that followed.
For those who live in Ukraine, much of this was never mysterious. For those who watched the war through screens, the gaps were filled by Russian propaganda. One click at a time, the Kremlin turned insinuation into cliché and cliché into a pseudo-fact. Over time, some people who had never been to Ukraine began writing with certainty about events they had never witnessed and realities that did not exist.
AzovContraFake.com gathers photographs, videos, documents, and statements from those directly involved, allowing readers to reconstruct the unit's history step by step. That is why this website matters. It does not ask the reader to believe a slogan. It gives the reader a path back through the record — and therefore out of the fog Russia spent ten years manufacturing.
In 1.530 days of war, we recorded over 250 videos from ground zero and wrote more than 1,500 articles.
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俄羅斯如何“武器化”亞速神話：揭開對俄羅斯最長謊言的鬥爭
作者：Giorgio Provinciali
翻譯：旺財球球
烏克蘭前線報道
烏克蘭，卡奇基夫卡 ¾¾ 德尼斯·“Redis”·普羅科彭科，現任烏克蘭國民警衛隊第一軍團“亞速”指揮官，在被俄羅斯扣押以及獲釋後在土耳其逗留數月後重返公眾視野。烏克蘭於2023年7月8日正式從土耳其接回五名亞速鋼鐵營指揮官；2026年2月，烏克蘭總統弗拉基米爾·澤連斯基授予普羅科彭科準將軍銜。
他最近的倡議瞄準了俄羅斯長期運行的信息戰之一：試圖把亞速貶低為宣傳性的漫畫形象。通過AzovContraFake.com，普羅科彭科邀請讀者追溯該部隊的曆史，這不是出於懷舊，而是一種信息自衛行動。該網站對九大反複出現的謬論提出了結構化的反駁：仇外、種族主義、性別歧視、反猶太主義、所謂對俄語者的迫害、新納粹象征、恐怖組織名號、戰爭罪指控，以及所謂脫離烏克蘭指揮鏈的獨立性。
（視頻：Alla與我在烏克蘭赫爾鬆拍攝的影像 ¾¾ 版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
（圖：我在與奧列西婭（Olesia F.）於烏克蘭基輔會麵當天拍攝的這張照片。桌上那本黑色封麵、印有“民族認同”符號的書講述的是亞速 ¾¾版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
這很重要，因為普京整個“去納粹化”的敘事就是為了把侵略偽裝成道德劇場。它把烏克蘭錯誤地描繪為極端主義之地、把俄羅斯描述為糾正力量，而實際上，這一指控被用作剝奪烏克蘭抵抗合法性的政治武器。一個謊言重複了十二年，不僅僅是宣傳，更是一種軍事弱點，因為它侵蝕了西方的信心、延緩政治決策，並將猶豫包裝成謹慎。
關鍵不是要抹去亞速在2014年複雜的起源，而是要防止那段起源被凍結、被篡改並被用來對付今天的部隊。亞速並非唯一麵對這一界定的人。2024年6月，美國國務院未發現第12特種部隊亞速旅存在重大侵犯人權的證據，表示該部隊通過了利希（Leahy）審查，並指出今天的亞速旅構成與俄羅斯為宣傳目的不斷提到的民兵組織顯著不同。
（圖：我在烏克蘭紮波羅熱拍攝的照片¾¾版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
（圖：象征仍被關押在俄獄中的亞速英雄的籠子¾¾版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
亞速戰士持有仇外、種族主義或性別歧視立場嗎？
該網站的回答基於姓名、麵孔與服役記錄，而非口號。它回顧了在亞速曆史上服役的不同族裔與宗教背景的士兵與人員。網站收錄的姓名包括格魯吉亞人、亞美尼亞人、猶太人、俄羅斯人、白俄羅斯人、克裏米亞韃靼人、希臘人、穆斯林，以及在戰鬥中作戰、救治傷員、記錄戰爭或在戰鬥中陣亡的女性。
它還明確劃清了該部隊與其首任指揮官安德裏·比萊茨基相關政治項目的界限，強調將亞速呈現為一支國家軍事編製，而非政治運動。
（視頻：Alla和我在第聶伯羅拍攝的影像¾¾版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
反猶太主義是亞速的基石之一嗎？
反猶太主義是最容易被捏造、也最難澄清的謊言之一。但在亞速案中，這一指控被那些實際服役者的記錄所推翻。網站列舉了猶太出身的士兵、醫務人員和支持者，並回憶起圍困亞速鋼鐵廠期間，烏克蘭首席拉比摩西·魯文·阿斯曼曾向以色列議會呼籲，敦促將亞速戰士撤離至以色列或第三國。
（視頻：Alla和我在烏克蘭戰壕中拍攝的影像¾¾版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
（圖：Alla和我在基輔一個紀念保衛馬裏烏波爾者的紀念碑旁報道¾¾版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
（圖：廣場上的幾塊展板¾¾版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
亞速在頓巴斯迫害俄語者嗎？
這一謬論在地域與語言層麵上同樣站不住腳。俄羅斯宣傳喉舌多年來一直假裝講俄語的烏克蘭人自然而然應當屬於莫斯科的政治世界。戰爭證明了恰恰相反：最早抵抗俄國侵略的許多烏克蘭人本身就是講俄語的。克裏姆林宮的錯誤在於將語言與順從混為一談。
幾個世紀以來，帝國與蘇維埃政權將俄語提升為等級、行政與強製文化統治的語言。但在烏克蘭，講俄語從未等同於被俄羅斯“擁有”。諷刺的是，那種曾被帝國用來統治烏克蘭的語言也被烏克蘭人用來拒絕帝國。
（圖：我在比拉采爾科瓦公墓拍攝的這張照片。許多墓碑紀念為保家衛國而犧牲的亞速士兵¾¾版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
亞速的標誌是新納粹主義象征嗎？
AzovContraFake網站將該符號作為國家理念（字母N和I）的字母組合，並以公民而不是種族術語定義了這一理念：對烏克蘭人民的奉獻、政治自由、民主、多元化和寬容。
在此，最有力的論據不是視覺相似性，而是製度含義、指揮紀律與實際行為。俄羅斯的宣傳通過將符號與士兵分離、將該部隊與國家分離、並把2014年與隨後一切切割開來而起作用。
（圖：我在基輔拍攝的這張照片，顯示數百麵旗幟獻給為保衛烏克蘭而犧牲的亞速團員¾¾版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
對生活在烏克蘭的人來說，這些問題大多從未神秘莫測。對那些通過屏幕觀看戰爭的人而言，空白被俄羅斯宣傳填滿。一次點擊一次點擊之間，克裏姆林宮把暗示變成陳詞濫調，再把陳詞濫調變成偽事實。隨著時間推移，一些從未到過烏克蘭的人開始以確定的口吻書寫他們從未親見的事件與並不存在的現實。
AzovContraFake.com 收集了照片、視頻、文件與直接參與者的聲明，讓讀者逐步重建該部隊的曆史。這就是該網站重要的原因。它不要求讀者相信某個口號，而是給讀者一條通過記錄回溯的路徑——從而走出俄羅斯花了十年製造的迷霧。
（圖：我在今年冬天拍的這張照片，當時氣溫接近零下30°C。在最冷的幾天之一，Alla和我在這裏與一位為捍衛自由而犧牲的烏克蘭英雄的母親一同祈禱。照片中與我們在一起的這位英雄的母親是布查大屠殺的幸存者¾¾版權所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
***
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