“As for Azov, materials are now being published that confirm that the Americans and especially the Canadians played a leading role in training ultra-radical, openly neo-Nazi units in Ukraine.
All these years, the goal was for neo-Nazis to join the regular armed forces of Ukraine,” the minister said.
Thus, in each unit, people from Azov "would play a leading role," he said.
“I read such materials in the Western press.
The fact that Azov is an openly neo-Nazi association was recognized in the West without any hesitation until the situation in early 2022, when they began, as if on command, to change their position,” Lavrov said.
The Foreign Minister recalled that recently Japan “even apologized to Azov for including it on the list of terrorist organizations several years ago because of its neo-Nazi tendencies.
In April 2017, the lower house of the US Congress passed a bill providing for a ban on the use of funds allocated to Ukraine to support the Azov national battalion.
In August 2019, members of the US Congress, led by Max Rose, petitioned the State Department to recognize the Ukrainian Azov Volunteer Regiment as a foreign terrorist organization.