https://www.poliziadistato.it/articolo/225d2c47fb2c9ef299497... It says "avevano combattuto nella regione ucraina del Donbass contro gli indipendentisti". So they were fighting against separatists.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Force_(Italy)#Presence_out...
> The investigations had begun about a year ago when the police headquarters in Turin, coordinated by the Central Directorate of Prevention Police, had monitored some people linked to political movements of the ultra right and who had fought in the Ukrainian region of Donbass against the separatists.
Wouldn't one expect at least that as part of fact checking?
Edit: Damn, so perhaps the poliziadistato.it article got it wrong. At least, according to Wikipedia.[0]
> Forza Nuova leader Roberto Fiore was once closely allied with the Ukrainian far-right Svoboda party, but following the beginning of the War in Donbass, Forza Nuova and Fiore "made a considerable shift to the pro-Russian camp." According to the Political Capital Institute, a Hungarian think tank, Forza Nuova is one of a number of Russian-backed radical right political parties in Europe.
But the supporting cites are from 2014-2015, so who knows?
There's a fine line between making a genuine mistake and lying to your readers.
The cooperation is based on mutual pursuit of more power.
Slovak neonazis were fighting in Donbass on the side of Russians/separatistit, because that side invested heavily in propaganda (abroad, not only domestic) and presented itself as a front against anything modern and especially the EU (which is the incarnation of evil to them), so reactionary forces are naturally drawn to them.
Neonazism was for all purposes Putin's de-facto state ideology for Russia since around 2005 or so.
The only fig leaf they have is the official denial of connection in between the skinheads and other neonazi groups and the state. That is only skin deep of course https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2017/11/23/dbb8470a...
Putin is of course afraid of image taint and loosing personal access to the Western politicians if he were to dress like a nazi himself. So he keeps himself nominally distanced
TLDR: Russia backs these groups to undermine Western societies. Nazis admire Putin because of shared disdain for democracy.
I would like to think that the US educational system inoculates everyone from those dreadful -isms.
* I mean that ocurrence of neo-nazis is approximately the same as in any normal country. You can never say there are no neo-nazis in any particular group of people, of course.
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Scree...
It seems to me like a bit of a sensationalist headline, and the more dangerous weapons are actually the small arms.
30kg fragmentation warhead is enough to kill a lot of people.
Few kg IEDs kill and maim up to a hundred people, now imagine how a factory made 30kg warhead will perform.
Links:
https://www.football-italia.net/140792/juve-ultras-neo-nazi-...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/01/nside-talys-ul...
Could I launch it from the ground, or does it need to be launched from the air? Could i just strap it to a Cessna, or does it need other systems (radar?) to work? Does it need the original war head, or can you attach any old explosive device.
In short, if I as a potential terrorist wanted to shoot down a plane, would this be a reasonable starting point?
30kg of high explosive could be useful to a generic terrorist but it's unlikely that the missile itself would have been used.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28976/italian-cops-rai...
But then the asking price seems high, it doesn't seem to have a warhead so this is just the missile.
Which leads to the question, if an incompetent party that was careless enough get busted has access to an old and useless missile, then what do the competent independent groups have access to?
Some sources say "ready to be armed and used" but with no other detail.
Some others are mentioning Matra as the manufacturer.
"Mr. Fiore, of Italy’s Forza Nuova, said Moscow is now the sole guardian of Western values, in the way Rome once was."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/far-right-flocks-to-russia-to-b...
Hahaha.. as if the bank account was that full to begin with
Also, given that I don't know Italian, I don't really know what the police report said.
The people of the EU often want to see ourselves as progressive, but we're a very diverse lot and there's a lot of people who would like to take a few steps back in regards to LGBT rights, Pan-Europeanism and multi-culturalism.
Today, both president and prime minister of Ukraine are Jewish both by ethnic origin and by religion, by the way.
For the large part it comes across as balanced and informed IMO, and your sweeping dismissal does not answer the factual issues it raises, particularly the role of the Azov Battalion and the Patriot of Ukraine organisation, "which considers Jews and other minorities "sub-human" and calls for a white, Christian crusade against them, it sports three Nazi symbols".
In my opinion, this piece on atlanticcouncil.org sorts out the misconceptions: there is in Ukraine no more support for extreme-right or neo-nazi organizations than other European countries (which however is on an alarmingly upward trajectory). However, "More ominously, Ukraine’s far-right, para-military formations and their penchant for vigilantism remain a problem that must be more vigorously countered by the state and their sources of funding investigated thoroughly." [0]
It is really necessary get a grasp of the whole picture.
[0] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-a...
