KYIV, Ukraine — Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, the Ukrainian government and NATO allies have posted, then quietly deleted, three seemingly innocuous photographs from their social media feeds: one soldier standing in a crowd, another resting in a trench. An emergency worker poses in front of a truck.
In each photograph, Ukrainians in uniform wore patches featuring symbols made infamous by Nazi Germany and later part of the iconography of far-right hate groups.
The photographs, and their erasures, highlight the Ukrainian military’s complex relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under Soviet and German occupation during World War II.
Russian President Vladimir V. That relationship is particularly sensitive because of Putin’s false declaration of Ukraine as a Nazi state, which he has used to justify his illegal invasion.
Ukraine has worked through legislation and military restructuring for years, with its members proudly wearing symbols steeped in Nazi history and holding views hostile to the left, LGBTQ movements and ethnic minorities. But some members of these groups have been fighting Russia since the Kremlin illegally annexed part of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014 and are now part of a wider military formation. Although the right-wing is politically marginalized, some are considered national heroes.
The iconography of these groups, including the skull and crossbones patch worn by concentration camp guards and the symbol known as the Black Sun, now appears with some regularity on the uniforms of soldiers fighting on the front lines, including soldiers who recite the imagery. Symbolizes Ukrainian sovereignty and pride, not Nazism.
In the short term, it threatens to bolster Mr. Putin’s campaign and fuel his false claims that Ukraine should be “de-Nazified” — which ignores the fact that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish. More broadly, Ukraine’s ambivalence toward these symbols, and sometimes even its acceptance, gives new, mainstream life to icons the West has been trying to eliminate for more than half a century.
“What worries me in the Ukrainian context is that people in leadership positions in Ukraine, they either don’t or they’re not willing to acknowledge and understand how these signs are viewed outside of Ukraine,” Michael Colborne said. A researcher for Bellingcat, an investigative group that studies the international right. “I think Ukrainians should be more aware that these images undermine support for the country.”
In a statement, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that as a country that suffered greatly under German occupation, “We emphasize that Ukraine categorically condemns any manifestations of Nazism.”
So far, the image has not lost international support for the war. However, it has left diplomats, Western journalists and advocacy groups in a difficult position: attention to the iconography risks Russian propaganda. Let it spread without saying anything.
Even Jewish groups and anti-hate organizations that traditionally call out hate symbols are largely silent. Privately, some leaders have worried about accepting Russian propaganda talking points.
Questions of how to interpret such symbols are divisive, not only in Ukraine, but as persistent as they are. Some insist that in the American South, today, the Confederate flag symbolizes pride, not its history of racism and segregation. The swastika was an important Hindu symbol before the Nazis co-opted it.
In April, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine posted the photograph on his Twitter account A soldier wearing a patch with a skull and crossbones called a totenkopf or death’s head. The particular symbol in the film is from a Nazi unit infamous for committing war crimes and guarding concentration camps during World War II.
The patch in the photograph matches the Totenkopf with the small number 6 on the Ukrainian flag. That patch is official merchandise for Death in June, which the Southern Poverty Law Center said the British neo-folk band produces “hate speech” that “employs themes and images of fascism and Nazism”.
The Anti-Defamation League considers Totenkopf a “symbol of general hatred”. But Jake Hyman, a spokesman for the group, said it was impossible to “make a conclusion about the wearer or the Ukrainian army” based on the patch.
“While the image is offensive, the music is of the band,” Mr. Hyman said.
The band now uses a photograph posted by the Ukrainian military to sell the Totenkopf patch.
The New York Times asked the Ukrainian Defense Ministry about the tweet on April 27. A few hours later, the post was deleted. “After studying this case, we have come to the conclusion that this logo can be interpreted ambiguously,” the ministry said in a statement.
The soldier in the photograph was part of a volunteer unit called the Da Vinci Wolves, which began as part of the paramilitary wing of Ukraine’s Right Sector, a coalition of right-wing organizations and political parties that militarized Russia after its illegal annexation of Crimea.
At least five other photographs on the Wolves’ Instagram and Facebook pages feature their soldiers wearing Nazi-style patches, including Totenkopf.
NATO militaries, the alliance Ukraine hopes to join, will not tolerate such patches. When such signs appear, groups like the Anti-Defamation League have spoken out, and military leaders have been quick to respond.
Last month, Ukraine’s state emergency service agency posted a photo on Instagram of an emergency worker wearing the black sun symbol, also known as a Sonnenrad, which appeared in the castle of Nazi general and SS director Heinrich Himmler. Black Sun is popular among neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
In March 2022, NATO’s Twitter account posted a photograph of a Ukrainian soldier wearing a similar patch.
Both photos were quickly removed.
In November, during a meeting with Times reporters on the front lines, a Ukrainian press officer wore a Totenkopf change made by a company called R3ICH (pronounced “Reich”). He said he did not believe the patch was associated with the Nazis. Other journalists asked the soldiers to remove the patch before taking photographs, said a second press officer present.
Ukrainian historian and religious scholar Ihor Kozlovsky argues that symbols have meanings unique to Ukraine and should be interpreted by how Ukrainians see them, not by how they are used elsewhere.
“A symbol can survive in any community or any history independently of how it is used in other parts of the world,” Mr. Kozlowski said.
Russian soldiers in Ukraine have been seen wearing Nazi-style patches, underscoring how complicated it is to interpret these symbols in a region steeped in Soviet and German history.
The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939, so it was surprised when the Nazis invaded Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, two years later. Ukraine suffered greatly under the Soviet government, which created a famine that killed millions. Many Ukrainians initially viewed the Nazis as liberators.
Factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its rebel army fought the Nazis in what they saw as a struggle for Ukrainian sovereignty. Members of those groups participated in atrocities against Jewish and Polish civilians. In the ensuing war, some groups fought against the Nazis.
Some Ukrainians joined Nazi military units such as the Waffen-SS Galizian. The emblem of the German officer-led group was a sky-blue patch showing a lion and three crowns. The unit participated in the massacre of hundreds of Polish civilians in 1944. After years of legal battles, Ukraine’s highest court ruled in December that the government-funded research institute could continue cataloging the entity’s symbols. Act of 2015.
Today, as a new generation struggles against Russian aggression, many Ukrainians see the war as a continuation of the struggle for independence during and immediately after World War II. Symbols such as the flag associated with the Ukrainian rebel army and the Galician patch are emblems of anti-Russian resistance and national pride.
Ukrainians angered by Russian aggression are hard to easily distinguish based on icons from those who support the country’s far-right groups.
Da Vinci’s Wolves, which started with right-wing members, the well-known Azov Regiment and other units were folded into the Ukrainian military and played a key role in defending Ukraine from the Russian army.
The Azov regiment was celebrated last year after holding out during the siege of the southern city of Mariupol. After the Da Vinci Wolves commander was killed in March, he received the leader’s funeral, which Mr. Zelensky attended.
“I think some of these right-wing entities mix their own fair bit of mythmaking into the public discourse,” said Mr. Colborne, the researcher. “But I think the minimum that can and should be done, not only in Ukraine but everywhere, is not to allow the symbols, rhetoric and ideas of the far-right to enter the public discourse.”
Kitty Bennett And Susan C. the beach Contributed to the research.