The Grayzone By NOIR
The government-funded research project’s mysterious removal of Azov’s profile was followed by a State Department decision to allow the controversial right-wing unit to receive U.S. military aid.
Editor’s note: the following article was originally published by Sam Carlen and Iain Carlos for the Noir newsletter.
Stanford University’s Mapping Militants Project (MMP), a U.S. government-funded initiative that conducts research on “violent militant or extremist organizations,” quietly removed their profile on the Azov Battalion early last month. The Azov Battalion (now known as the 12th Special Purpose Brigade “Azov”) is a Ukrainian National Guard unit infamous for its use of neo-Nazi insignia, recruitment of far-right foreign fighters, and alleged war crimes. The Stanford MMP’s mysterious removal of its Azov profile was followed about a month later by the U.S. State Department lifting its ban on military assistance to the unit, raising questions about the motives behind removal of the webpage.
MMP’s removal of Azov is significant in that it could be used to guide U.S. foreign policy. Though MMP was created and has operated with funding from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, the papers written by its researchers are cited in academic research, reports and testimony to Congress, government–funded institutions and initiatives, and federal agencies. The website functions as an authoritative source for information on militant and extremist groups, and their interactions and connections over time. At the very least, Azov’s removal means MMP’s list no longer contradicts the State Department’s decision allowing U.S. military assistance to the group, and therefore cannot be used to criticize it.
The Stanford MMP’s takedown of its Azov profile also may have occurred in part due to pressure from Ukrainian diplomats. Late last week, Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova published a post on Facebook celebrating the MMP’s removal of its Azov profile, with a screenshot of the “Page not found” message that appears if one navigates to the Azov MMP profile’s URL. Curiously, Markarova thanked Stanford for its “response,” and thanked her colleagues at the Ukrainian Embassy and the Association of Families of Azovstal Defenders “for constantly drawing attention and joint fight against Russian propaganda and disinformation,” according to Facebook’s automatic translation of the post. Markarova’s mention of Stanford’s “response” and her diplomats’ “constantly drawing attention” raises the possibility of a Ukrainian pressure campaign, spurred by Ukrainian diplomats, to get the MMP to remove its Azov profile.
The State Department and Markarova could not immediately be reached for comment.
Asked about the removal of Azov’s profile, one of the academics behind MMP, Professor Martha Crenshaw, told Noir: “we plan to update that profile, but I don’t know when the update will be complete.” When asked for more details, including whether militant group profiles are typically taken down during an update process, when the update would be completed, what kinds of updates were being made, and whether Azov’s profile would eventually again be visible on the MMP website, Crenshaw and the other MMP academics provided no specific answers. They also did not clarify whether Ukrainian Ambassador Markarova contacted the MMP about removing its Azov profile.
Founded in March 2014 as a volunteer unit to fight pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region, Azov was subsequently incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, and gained international attention for its role in re-taking the southeastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol from separatist forces in June 2014. During this engagement, Azov also received scrutiny for its neo-Nazi iconography, in particular an inverted Wolfsangel superimposed over a Black Sun (the former an ancient runic symbol appropriated by the Nazis, per the ADL, the latter “based on a design commissioned by SS leader Heinrich Himmler, and overwhelmingly used by neo-Nazi and esoteric National Socialist movements,” according to the MMP’s now-removed Azov Battalion profile).
Azov is part of the broader “Azov Movement,” a network of far-right Ukrainian groups that also includes a political wing, the National Corps (led by Azov founder and notorious white nationalist Andriy Biletsky), which the U.S. State Department called a “nationalist hate group,” and a paramilitary faction, the National Militia, which has attacked Roma and other minority communities in Ukraine…
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