Is a state a Nazi one when its army uses Nazi insignia freely?

In April 2022, I published an article entitled Aren't these Ukrainian laws the Nazi ones? where I analyzed some Ukrainian laws on ethnic minorities and came to the conclusion that these laws are similar to Nazi ones.

Last month I published an article entitled Nazi insignia on Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk region, and today I would like to consider a more general subject about these insignia, namely, the subject - What does the fact of the free use of such insignia in the Ukrainian army mean?

In 2022 a statement from scholars studying genocide, Nazism and World War II was circulated in many Western media.

The scholars - among other things - wrote:

We strongly reject … the equation of the Ukrainian state with the Nazi regime…

But “scholars studying Nazism” could not have failed to know that back in 2014, the year of the coup d’etat in Ukraine, Western media had already published photographs of Ukrainian servicemen with Nazi symbols; see photos and video below.

And as I noted in my aforementioned article last month, Ukrainian troops continue to use Nazi symbols to this day freely.

Scientists studying Nazism stated in 2022:

We do not idealize the Ukrainian state and society. Like any other country, it has right-wing extremists and violent xenophobic groups.

But since 2014, we are not talking about Nazi symbols in some “xenophobic groups” in Ukraine, which - according to the scientists - exist in every other country.

In Ukraine, these insignia are openly used by military personnel, that is, by people in government service.

And - as I wrote in my previous article - neither the commanders of these servicemen, nor their fellow soldiers demand the removal of these insignia.

Formally, since 2015, Article 436-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine has been in effect in Ukraine, and according to this article, the public use of Nazi symbols through the media is punishable by up to 10 years of imprisonment.

But I personally haven’t heard about Ukrainian authorities punishing any of the Ukrainian soldiers depicted in the video for using Nazi symbols.

In conclusion, I would like to answer the question: What does the fact of the free use of Nazi symbols in the Ukrainian army mean?

In my opinion, the fact of the free use of Nazi symbols in the Ukrainian army means that Ukraine actually is a Nazi state. Although repeated attempts are being made to hide this. 

In my opinion, it was precisely to conceal the Nazi essence of the Ukrainian state that Western curators of Ukraine ensured the election of the ethnic Jew Zelenskyy as President of this country in 2019, although he is not particularly smart, initially did not have sufficient finances for the election campaign, etc.

In May 2024, I devoted my article Why was exactly V. Zelenskyy elected as President of Ukraine in 2019? to this very issue.