And yet by the time November [2016] came around and the conference debate over the year-end appropriations bill was underway, the Conyers-Yoho measure appeared to be in jeopardy. And indeed it was. An official familiar with the debate told The Nation that the House Defense Appropriations Committee came

under pressure from the Pentagon to remove

the Conyers-Yoho amendment from the text of the bill.

The Pentagon’s objection to the Conyers-Yoho amendment rests on the [alleged] claim that it is redundant because similar legislation—known as the Leahy law—already exists that would prevent the funding of Azov. This, as it turns out, is untrue. The Leahy law covers only those groups for which the “Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”

Yet the State Department has never claimed to have such information about Azov, so funding to the group cannot be blocked by the Leahy law. The congressional source I spoke to pointed out that “even if Azov is already covered by Leahy, then no there was no need to strip it out of final bill.” Indeed, the Leahy law cannot block funding to groups, no matter how noxious their ideology, in the absence of “credible information” that they have committed human-rights violations. The Conyers-Yoho amendment was designed to remedy that shortcoming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(“Recruits of the Ukrainian volunteer battalion Azov regiment take part in tests after training at the Azov Battalion base, in Kiev, Ukraine, November 28, 2015). (Photo by STR / NurPhoto)

Considering the fact that the US Army has been training Ukrainian armed forces and national guard troops, the Conyers-Yoho amendment made a great deal of sense; blocking the avowedly neo-Nazi Azov battalion from receiving US assistance would further what President Obama often refers to as

“our interests and values.”

That neo-Nazis (or neo-fascists, if you prefer) are a distinctly minority taste in Western Ukraine, is clear and is not in dispute. Of late, however, there have been troubling signs that they may become a force to be reckoned with. According to The Jerusalem Post, in Ukrainian municipal elections held last October [2015], the neo-Nazi Svoboda party won 10 percent of the vote in Kiev and placed second in Lviv. The Svoboda party’s candidate actually won the mayoral election in the city of Konotop. Meanwhile, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported in November that Azov operates a boot camp that exposes children to “the regiment’s far right-wing ideology.”

“James W. Carden is a contributing writer for foreign affairs at The Nation. He served as a policy adviser to the Special Representative for Intergovernmental Affairs and the Office of Russia Affairs at the US State Department.”