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Now the brigade, a onetime volunteer militia absorbed into the Ukrainian National Guard in 2015, will have access to the same U.S. military assistance as any other unit. The policy shift was disclosed as Kyiv starts the summer fighting season and faces down a Russian military that has intensified its pressure on objectives in eastern Ukraine and the country’s energy infrastructure.
The State Department has been unclear about the origins and timing of the restrictions on Azov. Asked Monday about a recent policy shift enabling Azov to use U.S. weapons, the agency provided a statement saying that “after thorough review, Ukraine’s 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade passed Leahy vetting as carried out by the U.S. Department of State.”
The statement was referring to the “Leahy Law,” which prevents U.S. military assistance from going to foreign units credibly found to have committed major human rights violations. It is named for former senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who wrote the legislation. The State Department found “no evidence” of such violations, its statement says.
A State Department spokesman declined to answer follow-up questions, including when the ban was lifted and whether U.S. weaponry had already reached Azov personnel.
A separate ban preventing the “Azov Battalion” from receiving U.S. military assistance has been written into U.S. appropriations laws for years, the result of congressional concerns about the group’s origins. The State Department has said it does not believe that congressional ban should apply to Azov as it is currently constituted.
The brigade received word of a review’s results in a letter from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv that said an inspection had determined it was eligible for U.S. security assistance, Lt. Col. Sviatoslav Palamar, the brigade’s deputy commander, told The Washington Post on Tuesday. The brigade has not yet received any U.S. weapons but hopes to soon, he said. They are eager for all varieties of U.S. equipment — from tanks and infantry vehicles to air defense systems.
Palamar, who joined Azov Battalion in 2014, was taken prisoner in Mariupol in 2022 and later transferred to Turkey under an agreement with Moscow. He returned to Ukraine last summer with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who visited Turkey and traveled home with several Azov commanders. Their release infuriated the Kremlin, which insisted their agreement to allow them to leave Russia did not permit their return to Ukraine.
Palamar said he first learned his unit was banned from receiving U.S. training and weapons nearly a decade ago, when other National Guard troops were invited to train abroad and Azov was not. Instead, Azov troops downloaded NATO manuals online and taught themselves protocols from open source materials, he said.
“Even through all those years there was a ban, we wouldn’t stop any kind of training or stop investing into our evolution and becoming more and more professional,” Palamar said.
Although some Western weapons were delivered to Azovstal to help Ukrainian troops defend the plant, they were delivered to other troops defending the plant — not to Azov, Palamar said. Since then, his brigade — which has engaged in intense battles on the war’s front line — has not received U.S. weapon systems, he said.
Canceling the ban had been a priority for Ukrainian officials, who say the brigade could have been more effective during its defense of Azovstal if it had access to U.S. equipment. A Ukrainian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of negotiations, said Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba raised the topic of the ban with Secretary of State Antony Blinken when the top U.S. diplomat visited Kyiv last month.
“The decision on lifting the restrictions under the Leahy vetting process required thorough considerations and diplomatic efforts,” said Ruslan Muzychuk, spokesman for Ukraine’s National Guard, noting that a wide variety of units carry out operations on the front line. “Understanding by our allies how important it is to help each of these units is another important step on the way of our struggle for independence.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long cited racist and ultranationalist elements of the Azov Battalion as an element of his accusation that Ukrainian fighters and their rulers in Kyiv are neo-Nazis. The shift in U.S. policy has already reignited those Russian critiques.
“We are talking about … ultranationalist armed units,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday. “Such a sudden change in Washington’s position shows that they do not bother with anyone in their attempts to suppress Russia, using the Ukrainian people as a tool in their hands. They are even ready to flirt with neo-Nazis.”
The brigade’s leadership says that it long ago shed those associations and that its commanders have fully turned over since that era. “Now that the ban is lifted, it brings us to a full understanding of how poisonous Russian propaganda is,” Palamar said.
Within Ukraine, the brigade’s name has become synonymous with the country’s last stand in the besieged city of Mariupol. Ukraine eventually ordered the remaining troops in the steel factory to surrender to Russian forces to survive. As of early May, more than 900 remained in captivity.
The plight of the remaining Azov prisoners has captured the hearts and minds of Ukrainians, and “Free Azov” has become a common rallying cry in protests in Kyiv.
Azov seized on its new status as a brigade last year and launched an intensive recruitment campaign across the country that brought in more than 5,000 new troops in about two months. Survivors from Azovstal were among those interviewing and training the recruits, who were grilled on their motivations, background and physical fitness before selection.
O’Grady reported from Kyiv.
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