For what it's worth the Azov battalions are quite "controversial". They have been accused of much in the past.
Greek NEWS. Breaking news about Greece its people, politics and economy from the Greek city times, the leading source of information for Greece. Greek City Times is the leading International Greek news portal and news agency.
greekcitytimes.com
With regards to the guy who claims the fascists woud kill him if he tried to leave the city, here's the the entire written content at the greekcitytimes.com website:
>>>Greek in Mariupol: “The fascist Ukrainians would kill me, they don’t let us leave the city” (VIDEO)
With Russian forces besieging Mariupol, in which 120,000+ ethnic Greeks live, SKAI news spoke with a Mr Kiouranas who lives in the city and exposed that Ukrainian “fascists” are killing people for trying to leave the city.
When asked by SKAI news if he planned to leave the city, Kiouranas responded “how can I leave? When you try to leave you run the risk of running into a patrol of the Ukrainian fascists, the Azov Battalion.”
“They would kill me and are responsible for everything,” he added.<<<
Perhaps I missed it, but I do not see any evidence to support the assertions by the one guy that was interviewed (I watched the video but I couldn't understand what they were saying). I'm not saying his allegations have been proven false, but a statement by one person isn't conclusive.
The rest of the article appears to be rehashed or copied from other news outlets. For example, here's a quote from the greekcitytimes.com article:
>>>The battalion has drawn far-right volunteers from abroad, such as Mikael Skillt, a 37-year-old Swede, trained as a sniper in the Swedish army, who described himself as an “ethnic nationalist” and fights on the front line with the battalion.<<<
This is directly copied from the 2014 article in The Guardian, but they didn't make it clear it was copied, and they didn't bother to mention that Mr. Skillt now claims he has renounced his political views (according to a 2021 article by vice.com, link below). They also failed to mention that many of the extremists have reportedly sided with Russia. This seems like incredibly sloppy reporting to me.
>>>“There is no arguing about [the extremist ideology], because you can see the pictures of guys with swastikas,” said Skillt,
who has since renounced his own extremist politics. . . .
But not all the international right-wing extremist scene sided with Azov – far from it. The war in Ukraine divided the loyalties of the global far-right, with some supporting the Ukrainian side, backing them as fellow nationalists repelling Russian aggression,
while others sided with Russia, motivated in part by a notion of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a staunch defender of a white traditionalist Europe.
“The right-wingers of Europe… are divided into two camps, pro-Russian, and pro-Ukrainian,” said Skillt. “The pro-Russian side would be the dominant side.”
Ironically, given the Kremlin’s attempts to use Azov’s extremist ideology to smear the Ukrainian forces as a whole,
white supremacist foreign fighters also received training and fought for the pro-Russian separatists through groups like the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), an ultranationalist organisation which claims to be fighting for the “predominance of the white race.<<<
The war in Ukraine became a magnet for white supremacists from around the world, who fought on both sides of the conflict, living out their battlefield fantasies.
www.vice.com
The Azov Regiment certainly appears to be bad news, but I have a hard time seeing how it is that important to the overall situation in Ukraine other than as a propaganda tool.
Here's a snip from a more recent vice.com article:
>>>Meanwhile, Azov has been a boon to Russian propaganda, which has sought to smear Ukrainian forces as a whole as right-wing extremists. “Had there not been an Azov, Russia would have invented it,” said Rękawek, adding that the Kremlin PR tactic was particularly hypocritical, given that far-right foreign fighters have also volunteered on the pro-Russian side of the conflict.<<<
The Azov Battalion, which bears a Wolfsangel logo, trains civilians in Ukraine. Here's how a 79-year-old woman holding an AK-47 thrust the group into the spotlight.
www.vice.com
According to wiki: "In 2017, the size of the regiment was estimated at more than 2,500 members, but by 2022, it was estimated to be 900 members."
en.wikipedia.org
The Ukrainian government deserves criticism for integrating them into the national guard, but that hardly justifies bombing cities and killing civilians all across Ukraine.
