Ukrainian soccer fans filmed performing Nazi salutes – media
A video showing a crowd of Ukrainian soccer fans repeatedly performing a Nazi salute during their team’s match against a rival club has been published by a Ukrainian outlet Strana.ua. The short clip shows numerous men, mostly dressed in black, repeatedly chanting: “Glory to the nation!” and “Ukraine!”
The people in the video were identified by Strana.ua as “ultras” of the Veres Rivne football club. Photos and videos showing “the same people wearing the same clothes” were published on the social media pages of club fans, the outlet reported.
Veres hosted Dynamo Kiev on Saturday with the home club suffering a 0:1 defeat. There have been no reports of the Ukrainian authorities reacting in any way to the video showing Nazi salutes that has emerged on social media.
Moscow has long condemned Kiev’s elevation of Nazi collaborators to national hero status and has accused Western governments of deliberately ignoring continued neo-Nazi activity in Ukrainian ranks.
In June, French outlet Le Monde reported that Nazi symbols were prevalent in the Ukrainian military. The newspaper identified nearly 350 Ukrainian troops posting neo-Nazi imagery online, including Nazi salutes, swastika tattoos, Black Sun emblems, and Totenkopf insignias as part of its investigation.
In April, three Ukrainian youths were photographed giving Nazi salutes at a Holocaust memorial in the northeastern city of Kharkov. The incident occurred at the Drobitsky Yar memorial site, where up to 20,000 Jews were executed during the Nazi occupation in World War II.
