Azov, Responsibility, and Volunteer Battalions

The failed coup in Turkey stirred the Ukrainian community of political analysts and raised talk and fear of a military coup in Ukraine for several days. Some speak of an inevitable and bloody overthrow of power, others assure — there isn’t anyone who could stage a coup.

I don’t want to make predictions, but I do want to draw your attention to two recent stories. I am writing this on a Sunday morning, right when the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Odesa Portside Plant, the first Deputy Chair of Naftogaz Board Serhiy Pereloma is being released [Ed: Pereloma was released from arrest before the hearing, but during the hearing the court ruled to detain him until September 9 as a pretrial restrictive measure, with the possibility of ₴80 million bail]. The other ‘big fish’ [in the Odesa Portside Plant case], the First Deputy Head of Odesa Portside Plant Mykola Shchurykov, is also about to escape responsibility [Ed: On July 20, the court ruled to detain Shchurykov as a pretrial restrictive measure, with the possibility of ₴40.6 million bail].

Both of them could escape responsibility not because the detectives of the Anti-Corruption Bureau or anti-corruption prosecutors didn’t do their jobs well. But because ‘combat’ MPs and some other people in camouflage were blocking the court hearings on Friday and Saturday, creating an aura of craziness around these two cases.

Why the former battalions are involved, where are the camouflaged people coming from? Pereloma and Shchurykov were arrested in the case on embezzlement of company funds, not for misconduct in the ATO zone. The ‘combat’ MPs and the camouflaged people, although not above the law, are at least able to paralyze the implementation of any law.

It is mostly the same people participating in judicial impasses such as this one. They cause people to hate camouflage wearers more and more, and make President Poroshenko and the heads of law enforcement agencies angry with volunteer fighters.

Now, to the second story. On Friday, SBU special forces have successfully performed an operation and arrested members of the criminal group who robbed banks in Zaporizhzhia oblast. Special forces lured them into the forest, using a cash transit vehicle as bait, and attempted to neutralize them there. The two attackers were killed — a citizen of Latvia was shot by a sniper, preventing him from attacking the cash couriers, and a citizen of Russia, who was heavily wounded and died in the hospital on Saturday. Two other injured attackers were arrested, and two more managed to escape. One of them is from the Azov regiment.

All of these people have been fighting in Donbas since the first months of the war. They were well-prepared, they went on raids to the enemy’s rear, and stayed there for several days. During the ceasefire or the trench warfare they could not apply themselves anywhere, went from unit to unit, and finally joined a criminal group.

The mention of ‘Azov’ is key in this story. The citizen of Latvia, as well as the Russian citizen, used to be with Azov at some point, and fought there well. Another attacker was still serving at the regiment at the time of the attack.

The hotheads from the top level of command were demanding to send special forces to storm the Azov base in Urzuf and look for evidence. Two planes were waiting in the airfield in Kyiv and ready to go. The former commander of the regiment Andriy Biletskyi urgently flew to the dislocation of the unit to prevent provocations on site and calm the hotheads on his side down.

The clever people knew that storming an Azov base was madness. People who are in their right mind know that the regiment has all legal grounds not to let even the detectives of the military prosecution to their base for several days. Remember how long it took the military prosecutors to deal with a tiny Tornado unit? Azov, compared to Tornado, is a combat division.

The Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov was not in Kyiv — he has already left for vacation. However, we must pay tribute to the Head of the SBU Vasyl Hrytsak and the MP Andriy Biletskyi. One of them was smart and patient enough not to drive the situation to the bloody absurd, the other was smart enough to separate a brother-in-arms from a criminal.

The SBU often uses Azov as assault units in the frontline, this could be the reason they could find a common language in this charged situation. The detectives were let inside the base so that they could do their job. The top officials of the SBU were very professional, even more so than the command of the National Guard — there was no hysteria, no whipping up tension or speculation on the topic of volunteer battalions.

Biletskyi only had to call, and there would be a mob of youths in Kyiv city center, ready to destroy the enemies of Ukraine, FSB agents, and oligarchs. Everyone would be all about ‘zrada’ [En.: treason], the ‘third Maidan’, law enforcement who patron the activities of the criminals in Donbas area and press the real patriots. However, he did what a responsible person and commander should have done.

"We don’t leave our brothers-in-arms behind, not even in the battlefield when they are dead. But if the fighter has stepped over the red line, which separates the war and protection of Motherland from the criminal offense, they will have to bear full responsibility according to the law. There are rotten apples anywhere. Of course, if this person who made a mistake is a war hero and has shed blood for Ukraine, we would ask the prosecution to be merciful. But we are not savages, who protect themselves at any cost, our job is to protect our Motherland," Biletskyi said.

"We are not savages" are the key words here. I could only imagine how hard this decision was for Biletskyi, as he is going against the popular trend when a camouflaged person, especially from the ATO zone, is always right and hasn’t a care in the world. This example shows that when two sane people from different law enforcement structures — SBU and Azov — find a common language, nothing terribly stupid happens.

Of course, we should be watching Andriy Biletskyi carefully. His progress and growth in the two recent years have been enormous, but his radical and Nazi youth still manifest themselves sometimes. However, we can tell a responsible patriot who makes mistakes from a swindler and an opportunist.

We need such volunteers as Biletskyi’s Azov or Teteruk’s Myrotvorets fighters to be our baseline, not the strange camouflaged people who are currently blocking the work of the anti-corruption prosecutors under the Solomyanskyi District Court for Kyiv City.

Translated by Tetiana Vodianytska

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