Ukraine nationalist camp training youngsters to kill
Instructors spread ideology, show how to fend off Russia
KIEV, Ukraine — The campers, some clad in combat fatigues, carefully aim their assault rifles. Their instructor offers advice: Don’t think of your target as a human being.
So when these boys and girls shoot, they will shoot to kill.
Most are in their teens, but some are as young as 8. They are at a summer camp created by one of Ukraine’s radical nationalist groups, hidden in a forest in the west of the country. The camp has two purposes: to train children to defend their country from Russians and their sympathizers — and to spread nationalist ideology.
“We never aim guns at people,” instructor Yuri “Chornota” Cherkashin tells them. “But we don’t count separatists, little green men, occupiers from Moscow, as people. So we can and should aim at exercise at a camp near Ternopil, them.”
The nationalists have been accused of violence and racism, but they have played a central, volunteer role in Ukraine’s conflict with Russia — and they have maintained links with the government.
Earlier this year, the Ministry of Youth and Sports earmarked about $150,000 to fund some of the youth camps among the dozens built by the nationalists. The purpose, according to the ministry, is “national patriotic education.”
Cherkashin is a veteran of the fight against proRussia separatists in eastern Ukraine; he was wounded in combat and later came to lead Sokil, or Falcon, the youth wing of the Svoboda party.
It is important, Cherkashin says, to instill the nation’s youth with nationalist thought, so they can battle Vladimir Putin’s Russia as well as “challenges that could completely destroy” European civilization.
Among those challenges: LGBT rights, which lecturers denounce as a sign of Western decadence. Ukraine.
“You need to be aware of all that,” said instructor Ruslan Andreiko. “All those gender things, all those perversions of modern Bolsheviks who have come to power in Europe and now try to make all those LGBT things like gay pride parades part of the education system.”
While some youths dozed off during lectures, others paid attention.
During a break in training, a teenager played a nationalist march on his guitar. It was decorated with a sticker showing white bombs hitting a mosque, under the motto: “White Europe is Our Goal.”
Aside from the lectures — and songs around the campfire — life for the several dozen youths at the Svoboda camp was hard.
At 18, Mykhailo was the oldest of the campers. The training, he said, was necessary.
“Every moment things can go wrong in our country. And one has to be ready for it,” he said. “That’s why I came to this camp. To study how to protect myself and my loved ones.”