Watch: How Putin said he would “save” Ukraine from neo-Nazis with his “special mission” | Life on the front line

Ukrainian veterans of the Azov volunteer battalion took part in a rally dedicated to Volunteer Day Photo: NurPhoto

“[History] of “Azov” distorted and manipulated through certain propaganda efforts to denigrate the entire Ukrainian effort,» said Jack Ross, a volunteer who heads the humanitarian group Vans Without Borders (VWB).

«Some of the myths around them may be There is some truth to this, but the reality is that these are people whose homes were destroyed by a much larger aggressive enemy,” he adds.

The team helped vulnerable people

Mr Ross and his team traveled bombed roads and helped vulnerable people forced to live close to the front lines who were left hungry after Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

After 18 months of touring the country, VWB established contacts with the Ukrainian army and security services inside the country, who provided him with interviews with some of the hardest-to-reach people with insight into the conflict. .

Soldiers of the Ukrainian Azov battalion take part in military exercises near the southeastern city of Mariupol Photo: GENYA SAVILOV/AFP

During one of his missions, Ross was asked to interview an Azov fighter who sought to shed light on the Kremlin's desire to «exploit and exaggerate» the neo-Nazi history of the Azov Battalion.

The Azov fighter calls it “propaganda” used to launch and prolong the so-called “Putin special mission”, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers in the war.

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