POWER FROM THE BARREL OF A GUN: Azov and the Potential for a Neofascist Military Takeover of Ukraine, Part 1 (Revised and Updated)

As Ukraine’s political-military situation both at the front and in the rear deteriorates, the potential for major political crises and coup plots against the rule of Volodomyr Zelenskiy grows. As I have noted earlier, war and revolution often come together; war weakens the state, regime, army and society, leading to political fracture and designs by some to seize power for themselves illegally or asystemically. A classic example is World War I and its effect on Imperial Russia, but other manifestations of this phenomena affected Turkey, Austria-Hungary, Poland, later Germany, and other states as well, including a briefly quasi-independent Ukraine. Various forms of regime change and state collapse occurred in each: the illegal seizure of power by revolution from above, revolution from below, palace coups, including military coups. In Ukraine various warlords, military contingents, and socialist and nationalist revolutionary parties seized power in different parts of the country, with several coups occurring at the ’center’ in Kiev. All this could happen again just as the experience of the 17^th century Ukrainian ‘Ruin’ is beginning to repeat itself in this war-torn country.

The most likely candidates to attempt and be capable of a successful seizure of power will be armed ones, and there is no more powerful, potentially revolutionary force than the two Azov army corps: The 3rd Army Corps Azov of the Ukrainian armed forces’ ground forces commanded by the neofascist Azov organization’s founder Brigadier General Andriy Biletskiy and the 1st Corps of the Ukrainian (formerly a National Guard Brigade ‘Azov’ under the Internal Affairs Ministry) commanded by Biletskiy’s Azov rival, Brigadier General Denys ‘Redis’ Prokopenko. What resources do Azov and its Army Corps possess? How much political and ideological influence do they wield inside Ukraine? And what domestic and foreign allies do they have and what do the latter provide Azov? What are the prospects for and obstacles to an Azov-led military or military-backed coup? In this Part 1, I discuss Biletskiy’s 3rd Army Corps ‘Azov.’ I will examine the 1st National Guard Corps Azov in Part 2.