He being chief foreign correspondent for NBC, we’d expect Richard Engel to know something about the countries he reports on, wouldn’t we?
Only kidding. Of course we wouldn’t! But we might expect some lowly minder to take him to one side and tactfully suggest that, when doing war propaganda in Gallant Ukraine, it’s rank bad salesmanship to be promoting its most notorious fascist militia, whose emblem derives from the death’s head insignia of the 3rd Panzer Division – “Totenkopf” – of the Waffen SS.
I refer to Ukraine’s infamous Azov Battalion, whose spiritual connection with Hitler’s elite death squad goes back to WW2. After being routed by the Red Army’s T-34 tanks at Kursk, what was left of the 3rd Panzer Division was reassigned to do the really nasty work in “the” Ukraine. To that end it recruited eager assistants in the far right Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, led by the terrorist Stepan Bandera.
(After the US backed Maidan Coup of 2014, a street was renamed in Bandera’s honour. While the incendiary name change was recently reversed, Bandera is still idolised by the Azov.)
Here’s the Azov Battalion strutting its stuff in Kiev, a few months after Maidan:
Now see yesterday’s one minute twenty-two takedown, by Aaron Mate, of Engel’s monumental ignorance:
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the emblem was not a copy of the ss but the German wolfsangal.
Oh well, that’s alright then! Stepan Bandera was one of the good guys after all. Silly me!
Only kidding. Accuracy of small detail does matter, so thanks for correcting me.
I was not being a smart arse if you were annoyed I am sorry.
Sorry Peter. My flippancy often gets me into trouble. I’m genuinely appreciative of your clarification re the SS symbol. I didn’t think you were being snarky. Reading my reply now, I can see it might have looked as if I was.