There are Nazis in Russia and they have been fighting in Ukraine on behalf of the separatists. Alexander Barkashov is a former member of the Russian National Unity. RNU were neo-nazi/Russian ultranationalists. Barkashov was their leader until the group was banned in 2000. Some members, including Barkashov, splintered off and started the Russian Orthodox Army. ROA is behind the separatist insurgency in Donbas. ROA does not hold itself out as neo-nazis, but they do just about everything neo-nazis do. They are anti-semites and regularly abduct and harass any religious leader who is not a member of the Russian Orthodox Church (Protestants, Catholics, Greek Orthodox, etc.). It is the Russian Orthodox extremism that is driving support in Russia for the war with Ukraine with
Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, openly supporting the war with Ukraine and claiming that it was a holy war over gay rights. Sadly, a more accurate picture of the war in Ukraine is a split among ultranationalists in the Orthodox church who believe that they are fighting a holy war against each other. The more the conflict turns into a religious war, the more difficult it will be to ever see a peace treaty to end the war.
There are definitely neo-nazis in Ukraine, but it is a much more complicated situation. Azov battalion and its political wing are more like Marine LePen's National Front party in France. They are ultranationalist right wingers who hate immigrants and want a purely Ukrainian society. In Ukraine, the Azov battalion's political wing only got 2% of the vote in parliamentary elections. Marine LePen got 33% of the vote in the 2017 presidential election.
There are definitely neo-nazis in the Azov battalion. But the Azov battalion has about 1500 members. The Ukraine armed forces has about 245,000 active duty soldiers and about the same number of reserves. Azov is a tiny portion of Ukraine's armed forces. Calling Ukrainians neo-nazis because of the Azov battalion is like calling the US Armed Forces neo-nazis because there are servicemembers who are active in neo-nazis groups.
When you actually look at the big picture in Ukraine instead of obsessing over tiny groups of radicals, you can clearly see that the neo-nazi issue is a pretext and has nothing to do with actual Ukrainian civil society. With its ultra-nationalist movement, Ukraine could have easily gone the way of Serbia following the fall of the Soviet Union. But it didn't. Ukraine elected Zelensky, a Jew who ran on an anti-war platform. Jews, LGBTQ+, immigrants, Catholics, Muslims, etc. all lived much better lives in Ukraine than they would in Russia.
