A Nazi in Command
General Valerii Zaluzhnyi is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - meaning the military commander of the Ukrainian ground forces, second only to President Zelensky in the chain of command. He was named by Time magazine was one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2022 for his role in commanding the armed forces of Ukraine.
He is also a Nazi. For the sake of this article and most of my writing, I am using the term Nazi to include neo-Nazis and Nazi collaborators because in my opinion if you support and help Nazis, you are also a Nazi. There is not compromising with Nazism. Zaluzhnyi may not identify himself as a Nazi, but as will be seen, his actions show that he is indeed a Nazi.
The Evidence
In October, there was a picture posted on his twitter account showing him with what appears to be a swastika on his bracelet. It turns out this is not accurate as he was wearing a “Viking Bracelet” that only has Norse designs. Ukraine flag profiles quickly jumped on this as evidence that he was not a Nazi, but it is not as simple as that.
The Ukraine flag profiles explain this away that Zaluzhnyi really likes Vikings….Vikings are pretty cool after all. This would be a nice simple explanation and we could move on from this post, but the real world is not so simple and Norse symbols have been appropriated by Nazis and white supremacists throughout the world. This has been detailed in a 2017 article by Judith Gabriel Vinje entitled Viking symbols “stolen” by racists. She writes:
I found that Viking and Norse symbols are increasingly being used in the U.S. by hate groups—neo-Nazis and white supremacists—to propagate their racist message.
And they were out in full force as white supremacists along with far-right hate groups and neo-Nazis paraded in Charlottesville, Va., this summer. I was watching as the coverage of this white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally-turned-riot revealed several Viking symbols being sported: Odin’s raven, Thor’s hammer, rune letters, and the Valknut, as well as the Nazi SS symbol based on runic letters.
The bracelet itself is one which the Ukrainian website Pakabone is now selling as That Very Bracelet. According to their own pictures and description, the bracelet includes the Norse symbol of the Valknut. As described by Pakabone:
Valknut - a symbol of the trinity of the three main worlds of Scandinavian mythology. A sign associated with Odin.
As described by the Anti Defamation League:
ALTERNATE NAMES: Valknut, Valknutr, Hrungnir's Heart
The Valknot or "knot of the slain" is an old Norse symbol that often represented the afterlife in carvings and designs. It is often considered a symbol of the Norse god Odin. Some white supremacists, particularly racist Odinists, have appropriated the Valknot to use as a racist symbol. Often they use it as a sign that they are willing to give their life to Odin, generally in battle.
As can be seen from the “Celtic Cross” tattoo above, this Norse imagery is commonly used by white supremacists and Nazi organizations. This tattoo uses the same “Solomon’s Knot” motif which was on Zaluzhnyi’s bracelet and at low resolution was mistaken for a Swastika.
Thor’s Hammer, also featured on the bracelet, has been often used by hate groups. As the Anti Defamation League describes:
Although its traditional origins are non-racist, and although most Asatruers today are not racist, the Thor's Hammer symbol has been appropriated by neo-Nazis and other white supremacists, especially those who practice racist or white supremacist versions of neo-Norse beliefs under the guise of Odinism or Wotanism. White supremacists will often even create racist versions of the Thor's Hammer, incorporating swastikas or other hate symbols into the decoration.
Taken by itself, the bracelet is only an indicator of Zaluzhnyi’s far right affiliation, but it proves nothing. But we do not have to look much further to see where his loyalties lie.
This photo, shared by the World Socialist Website , can also be found at Censor.net. The photo was originally published on January 28, 2022 on Zaluzhnyi’s personal Facebook page though it appears to be blocked or deleted now.
In the photo are: Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo, Yuriy Ulshin, Valery Zaluzhny, Oleksandr Pavlyuk and two more unidentified individuals. Dmytro Kotsyubaylo was personally awarded with the Hero of Ukraine medal by President Zelensky on December 1, 2021. The New York Times described him in April of 2021 in the following manner:
In Avdiivka, a volunteer unit of Ukraine’s ultranationalist Right Sector keeps a pet wolf in a cage outside the commander’s office. The commander, Dmytro Kotsyubaylo — his nom de guerre is Da Vinci — jokes that the fighters feed it the bones of Russian-speaking children, a reference to Russian state media tropes about the evils of Ukrainian nationalists.
On Dmytro's table there are busts of Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych and Yevgen Konovalts. These were all Ukrainian ultra nationalists who sided with Nazi Germany in World War II. You can read more about Stepan Bandera in an earlier post of mine.
Roman Shukhevych helped lead the Nachtigall’ battallion which according to Per Anders Rudling’s research “helped carry out the L’viv pogrom as well as massacres of Jews in the vicinity of Vinnytsia.”
Yevgen Konovalts was the original leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists who was assassinated before he could take part in collaborating with Nazis in World War II.
Oleksandr Pavlyuk was also awarded the Hero of Ukraine award by Zelensky. He was the commander of the 24th Mechanized Battalion in 2014. The emblem of the 24th Mechanized Battalion makes use of the same lion as the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS used in World War II.
One can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. Zaluzhny appears quite happy to be hanging out with these Nazis and their Nazi memorabilia. And if this is not evidence enough, there is the fact that his former advisor was the head of Right Sector, Dmytro Yarosh. Yarosh did not last long in the position as the post itself was eliminated, but Zaluzhny’s choice is quite telling.
Taken together all of this evidence points to General Zaluzhny being a Nazi. However, there is enough doubt that Ukraine flag profiles can ignore all the red flags and say he just likes Norse mythology and hangs out with known Nazis. Time magazine was happy to ignore this and put him on their cover in October.
The western media has swept Ukrainian Nazism under the rug and depicts it as Russian propaganda today in spite of their previous reporting on it. I will let my readers draw their own conclusions from the evidence, but I have seen enough to consider him a Nazi. You can find more on Ukrainian Nazism in my previous post:
I agree that anyone who's palsy-walsy with Nazis is highly suspect right there. The fact that you count Nazis as your friends means that you can at least live with Nazi ideology, which makes you at minimum a Nazi apologist. Disgusting! No surprise though that Time magazine could honor him like this. The US has never had any real problems with Nazis.
So trump et.al. are Nazi’s too, including people in Congress....