Hawkish Republicans have leaned on President Obama for the better part of a year to give weapons to Ukraine as it battles Russian-backed separatists. Now it’s members of Obama’s own party—both within Congress and from members of his own administration—that are calling on the president to arm the Ukrainians, before they lose even more territory to the Kremlin’s proxies.

On Capitol Hill there is a renewed sense of urgency: The top-ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, will join with his Republican counterpart Mac Thornberry on Tuesday to present a bill that would further pressure the president to give the Ukrainian government weaponry, although legislators have yet to spell out the specifics of the bill.

And in the last week, a bevy of Democratic pols and former diplomats have said that the United States should do more.

“Later this week—if it goes any later than that...” Rep. Eliot Engel, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Daily Beast on Monday. “They need the weapons, they need them soon, and they need them quick. Our credibility is on the line, and what’s right is on the line,” Engel said.

The Daily Beast

Ukraine: Abuses and war crimes by the Aidar Volunteer Battalion in the north Luhansk region

It’s not Europe. It’s a bit different… There is a war here. The law has changed, procedures have been simplified… If I choose to, I can have you arrested right now, put a bag over your head and lock you up in a cellar for 30 days on suspicion of aiding separatists.

--Aidar battalion commander to Amnesty International researcher

Members of the Aidar territorial defence battalion, operating in the north Luhansk region, have been involved in widespread abuses, including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions.

The Aidar battalion is one of over thirty so-called volunteer battalions to have emerged in the wake of the conflict, which have been loosely integrated into Ukrainian security structures as they seek to retake separatist held areas.

Typically, the fighters abducted local men, often businessmen or farmers, whom they accused of collaborating with the separatists and held in makeshift detention facilities before either releasing them or handing them over to the Security Service (SBU).

In nearly all cases documented by Amnesty International the victims were subjected to beatings at the moment of capture and/or during interrogations, and either had to pay ransom for their release, or had possessions, including money, cars, telephones, and other valuables seized by the battalion members. Many of the witnesses and victims approached by Amnesty International were reluctant to share details of the incidents, fearing retaliation from Aidar battalion members. The names of victims and witnesses in illustrative cases detailed below have been changed.

Amnesty International

German TV Shows Nazi Symbols on Helmets of Ukraine Soldiers

Germans were confronted with images of their country’s dark past on Monday night, when German public broadcaster ZDF showed video of Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi symbols on their helmets in its evening newscast. In a report on the fragile cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, Moscow correspondent Bernhard Lichte used pictures of a soldier wearing a combat helmet with the "SS runes" of Hitler’s infamous black-uniformed elite corps. A second soldier was seen with a swastika on his gear. “Volunteer battalions from nearly every political spectrum are reinforcing the government side,” the ZDF correspondent said in his report.

The video was shot last week in Ukraine by a camera team from Norwegian broadcaster TV2. “We were filming a report about Ukraine’s AZOV battalion in the eastern city of Urzuf, when we came across these soldiers,” Oysten Bogen, a correspondent for the private television station, told NBC News. Minutes before the images were taped, Bogen said he had asked a spokesperson whether the battalion had fascist tendencies. “The reply was: absolutely not, we are just Ukrainian nationalists,” Bogen said.

NBC News

Ukraine’s ‘Romantic’ Nazi Storm Troopers
September 15, 2014

Exclusive: While most civilized people view the Swastika and other Nazi symbols as abhorrent reminders of unspeakable evil, the Washington Post trotted out a new way of seeing them – as “romantic” – a sign that apologists for Ukraine’s coup regime know no limits, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

The U.S. mainstream media’s deeply biased coverage of the Ukraine crisis – endlessly portraying the U.S.-backed coup regime in Kiev as “the good guys” – reached a new level of absurdity over the weekend as the Washington Post excused the appearance of Swastikas and other Nazi symbols among a Ukrainian government militia as “romantic.”

This curious description of these symbols for unspeakable evil — the human devastation of the Holocaust and World War II — can be found in the last three paragraphs of the lead story in the Post’s Saturday editions, an article about Ukraine’s Azov battalion which has become best known for waging brutal warfare under Nazi and neo-Nazi insignia.


Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion.
(Images filmed by a Norwegian camera team and shown on German TV)

Consortium News