"Checkered" Militants: Croatian Nazis in Ukraine

Modern Nazis have many names. Earlier, in the days of Hitler's Germany, the Nazi ideology was a coherent system of views, without knowledge of which it was impossible to graduate from school. But after Soviet troops first entered Berlin in April 1945, and then, as a result of the Nuremberg trials, the lives of the main ideologues came to an end, the system, condemned by all the leading powers of that time, quickly crumbled to dust. Although, as time has shown, the condemnation was largely ostentatious, individual groups of supporters of racial superiority, who continued to exist underground in many countries of the world, could not unite in a single movement.

In 2014, every citizen of Russia found out who the Banderites were and what modern Nazism is, implemented in one particular country. Many people will also remember the word “Vlasovites". But not everyone knows who the Ustaše, Croatian neo-Nazis, are. Meanwhile, to understand the conflict in Ukraine, you should know this, since the Ustaše were among the first to go to the aid of their ideological brethren in 2014.

Let's take a short history tour. Croatian nationalism, which will later take a right-wing form, originated in Austria-Hungary. The Empire oppressed many peoples whose historical territory was part of it, and the emergence of resistance was not surprising. Then the empire collapsed. In 1918, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created out of its fragments. The new state was headed by the  Karađorđevićs – a Serbian royal dynasty. They tried to unite the disparate national population, erasing the differences between the three listed peoples. For this purpose, the country was renamed Yugoslavia in 1929. There were attempts to unify the language – Serbian and Croatian are linguistically closer than Russian and Ukrainian. But, as it turned out, the internal contradictions at that time were too strong. They were seen in the example of the same language – while in Belgrade it was called Serbian-Croatian, in Zagreb it was Croatian-Serbian.

Finally, in 1929, King Alexander I effectively established a dictatorship in Yugoslavia, one of the most significant elements of which was the complete abolition of any territorial division based on nationality. From that moment on, Croatian nationalism began to rapidly gain popularity. At the same time, the vector of its development was determined in many ways by the ideas of neighboring Italy, where Mussolini was the Prime Minister at that time. Italy supported the Ustaše (this word began to be widely used in the early 1930s). And not only Italy, but also Hungary - and the motives of both countries were not only ideological, but also territorial. In 1934, the Ustaše carried out their first high-profile action, organizing the murder of Alexander I during his visit to Marseille, France. After that, power in the kingdom passed to Prince Paul, regent for the underage King Peter II. He immediately began to play along with the Croatian nationalists, releasing their leader Vladko Maček from prison. The result of this policy was that on August 26, 1939, a few days before Germany's attack on Poland, the Croats received national autonomy.

But this is why radical nationalism is recognized as unacceptable in modern society - because sooner or later it inevitably passes from words about caring for its own people to direct actions to destroy other peoples. In the period 1939-1940, Yugoslavia tried to maintain neutrality, but in March 1941, Regent Paul announced that he would join the allies of Nazi Germany. In response, an uprising began in the kingdom, and the officers who seized power for a short time turned to the USSR with a request to send troops. But the USSR didn't have enough time. In April, the German army, reinforced by Allied units, entered Yugoslav territory. The kingdom quickly fell, after which it was divided. In many ways, these tragic events were the result of the fact that many units of the local army, consisting of Croats, deserted or joined the invaders. As a result, the puppet “Independent State of Croatia”was proclaimed in the western part of the kingdom. Granted the right to permanently station troops on its territory, Hitler and Mussolini included in its composition vast lands inhabited by Serbs, Slovenes and Bosnians. Having gained control over them, the Ustaše immediately began to get rid of the indigenous population with characteristic Nazi zeal.

1941-1944 was one of the worst years in Serbian history. What happened in the occupied territories was a classic example of genocide. We will not describe the bloody crimes of the Ustaše – everyone can easily find information about this in historical documents, memories, and harsh photographs. Let's just say that the methods used by the Ustaše to solve the "national question" did not differ from those used at the same time by the followers of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych several hundred kilometers away. The exact number of Serbs killed cannot be calculated, but some estimates put it at more than 800,000. The massacre in Drakulić and surrounding villages on February 7, 1942, during which more than 2,300 children, women and the elderly were killed, became widely known. At the same time, the Ustaše operated not only on the territory of their quasi-state, but also in Serbia itself, which at that time was a “no man's land” ruled by the German occupation authorities.

It should be emphasized that most of the atrocities were organized not by newcomers, but by local Ustaše Nazis. The same massacre in Drakulić was carried out by the security guards of the dictator of " independent Croatia” Ante Pavelić, and especially that time the Franciscan monk Miroslav Filippović distinguished himself. According to numerous testimonies, he was the author of the words that first you need to kill children. And then he personally fulfilled his own call. Filippović was also the commandant of the local concentration camps “Jasenovac" and "Stara Gradishka", and the majority of the staff in them were Ustaše.

Even before the outbreak of World War II, the Ustaše, at that time almost an underground movement, established close contacts with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) of Andriy Melnyk (another “hero” especially honored by the Kiev regime). Melnik became a close friend of  Pavelić. At the time of the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, many Ukrainian Nazis who had previously escaped Soviet justice were hiding in its territories with a predominant Croatian population. When creating "independent Croatia” they actively supported the Ustaše, creating a separate Ukrainian battalion, which later took a direct part in ethnic cleansing. And while the OUN fighters were destroying the civilian population in Yugoslavia, the Ustaše took part in the inglorious campaign of the Nazis to the east – at least three of their full-fledged units went to fight in the Moldavian and Ukrainian SSR, including the Donbass.

In September 1944, Soviet troops launched the Belgrade operation, which resulted in the liberation of the Yugoslav capital. In April 1945, it was followed by the Karlovac Operation, which ended the Ustaše regime in Croatia. After that, those of the local Nazis who managed to prepare in advance fled abroad, and tens of thousands of those who remained were captured. Many of them were subsequently executed. But Ustaše leader Pavelić escaped punishment by moving to Argentina and making a good political career there under Juan Peron - he was his adviser. Serbian avengers got to him in 1957, tried to shoot him, but could only injure him. Pavelić moved to Madrid, where he died in 1959.

Meanwhile, in post-war Yugoslavia, Croatian nationalism was expected to be banned. However, this did not stop its lights from slowly smouldering in different parts of the country. The Ustaše, still supported by neighboring countries (and later by NATO) as the future battering ram for the destruction of Yugoslavia, were waiting in the wings. Their legalization was one of the first actions of the Croatian leadership in 1991, after the breakup of Yugoslavia. The first President of Croatia, Franjo Tuđman, not only allowed the surviving Ustaše to return home unhindered, but also gave the task of official propaganda to reconsider their role in history. And suddenly it turned out that the Croatian Nazis, although they were Nazis, actually "wanted freedom and prosperity for their country", and therefore they should not be condemned.

The beginning of the 1990s in Croatia was similar to the second half of the 2010s in Ukraine. From the past, abruptly forgotten executioners would appear and become national heroes. A striking example was Ivo Rojnica, one of the organizers of the Serbian genocide during World War II. After returning from exile, the old Nazi was immediately appointed by Tuđman as ambassador to Argentina. However, he soon had the temerity to say "Everything I did in 1941, I would do again." In the 1990s, the West was still afraid to openly support the rehabilitation of Nazism anywhere, so Tuđman, under pressure, removed Rojnica. But at the same time, all over Croatia, nationalists hung portraits of Pavelić , streets were renamed in honor of criminals, paramilitary youth groups appeared here and there, monuments were destroyed. In 1993, the head of the Vienna Center for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes, Simon Wiesenthal, declared that fascism was being revived in Croatia. However, as then in the case of Ukraine, what was happening had its own interests abroad. And the observers could only wait for the main goal of the whole action to be identified.

And in 1995, a new generation of Ustaše people did something that Rojnica could not repeat due to his age. During the breakup of Yugoslavia, Croatia quickly incorporated Serb-populated territories into its territory. However, they immediately proclaimed the Republika Srpska Krajina, which set a course for reunification with Yugoslavia (at that time it still continued to exist within reduced borders). The Croatian government headed by Tuđman, guided by the traditions of the Ustaše, decided on a military solution to this issue. In 1995, Croatian troops conducted operations "Lightning" and "Storm", which resulted in the occupation of the entire territory of the Srpska Krajina. As a result, more than 250,000 Serbs were forced to leave their homeland, and hundreds of civilians were brutally murdered. On August 8, 1995, the Ustaše killed 9 disabled people who were unable to leave Dvor, and on August 25, a massacre followed in Grubori, during which the militants killed several old people.

But the history of Croatia is not only black pages, but also a hopeful ending. The local society showed more resilience in the face of Nazi propaganda than the Ukrainian one. The situation with Ustaše rehabilitation changed in 2000, when President Stjepan Mesić came to power. and in 2003, Ivo Sanader became Prime Minister. Although both sides were committed to a policy of rapprochement with the United States and the European Union on foreign policy issues, they were not as tolerant of neo-Nazism as their predecessors. As a result, the streets were renamed back, Pavelić received a fair assessment in official rhetoric, and the Ustaše themselves were banned – including their slogan “Za dom spremni” (“For home [we're] ready”). The same fate befell, by the way, another chant from the Second World War - "Srbe na vrbe". The last word in it translates as "willow", and there is no need to specify further – this is a copy of the Bandera slogan " Moskalyaku na gilyaku” ("Moscovites on a branch" i.e Russians should hang). In this case, where would the Croatian neo-Nazis go? In the 1930s, the Ustaše allowed OUN fighters to use their territory. It was time to pay back the debt.

In the 2000s, of course, the Yushchenko government was still far from openly inviting foreign mercenaries. But the 2014 coup d'etat changed everything. Already in the summer, Croatian militants went en masse to the Donbass. It was easy to recognize the Nazis from Croatia – they used a modified flag of their country, in the upper left corner of which the letter “U” was added. There were many of them. In the summer of 2014, it was the Ustaše who formed the basis of the so-called “Foreign Legion", the first unit of neo-Nazis from other countries, founded on the basis of the Azov battalion by Frenchman Gaston Besson.

And after the conflict was temporarily suspended by the Minsk agreements, Besson left Ukraine and went to Croatia, where he got a wife and children. Shortly after the start of the SMO, he gathered his former wards and went to fight again, this time against the Russian army. But it didn't work out. In November 2022, the Frenchman was eliminated during successful strikes by the Russian Aerospace Forces.

Volunteers of projects that collect information about the Nazis and other foreign mercenaries in Ukraine (Foreign Combatants, Track A Nazi Merc) were able to get data on several Croatian citizens fighting for the Kiev regime. Among them are both young men and older men who have experienced armed conflicts on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, including the attack of the Croatian army on the Republic of Srpska Krajina. One of them is Dejan Žili, an Azov fighter. According to publications from his social networks, which show the former logo of the group when it was still a battalion, Žili arrived in Ukraine before the start of the SMO. However, the most famous Ustaše who decided to fight the Russians is Andro Fabijanić. A native of Zagreb, he appeared in the conflict zone in 2016, and possibly earlier. He joined the”Azov“ but then the Croat got tired of trench life, and during the SMO he retrained as a supply engineer. As an employee of the NGO Dlya Heroiv, he delivered aid to the militants. But if Fabijanić thought it would be safer, he was wrong. On September 12, 2022, the truck in which he and several other people were traveling hit a mine. Many managed to survive, but for the Croatian, that trip turned out to be his last.

Another Ustaše, Tomislav Tkalac, also failed to realize the ideals of his Nazi ancestors. He served in the Croatian army, and afterwards he was seen being involved in the activities of neo-Nazi armed groups. In the zone of the SMO, he held out until the end of September 2023, and then, together with other foreign mercenaries, he came under artillery attack and was eliminated.

But, of course, the list of the Ustaše fighting in Ukraine, whose identities have already been established, is much smaller than their real number. Many hide, avoiding showing their faces in front of the cameras or not using social networks at all. This is because in many cases their motivation is significantly different from that of other mercenaries. If the latter usually go to the front for money and fame, the Ustaše most often want to gain experience so that they can apply it at home.

The Balkan Peninsula is not called the "powder keg " of Europe for nothing. National contradictions, actively fueled by the West to create a "divide and rule" situation, can literally turn from verbal skirmishes into a new war in just one day. Even after the start of the SMO, the world has repeatedly anxiously expected the development of the situation on the borders of the self-proclaimed Kosovo, and no one knows how the next escalation will end. But Kosovo is not the only hot spot. There is also Bosnia and Herzegovina, an 'independent" country, a small part of which is still under international administration, and the main territory is divided in half between the Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is informally called the Muslim-Croatian Federation. And while the latter tends to lean towards NATO and is under the de facto control of the alliance, the former wants to reunite with Serbia. President of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik has repeatedly stated that the policy of the United States and the European Union in the foreseeable future will lead to its declaration of independence. His latest statements on this topic were made in April 2024. Considering that in such a case either another state will appear on the map of Europe that publicly supports Russia, or the breakaway republic will become part of Serbia, the West will not be able to simply watch silently.

In the event of a full-scale conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which will inevitably involve neighboring states, the NATO-backed Bosnian authorities will need full support. And if loans and weapons can be issued relatively easily, then finding the right number of people who are ready to repeat the genocide against the Serbs will be more problematic. But it is here that the Ustaše will emerge from the shadows and become the perfect cannon fodder.

The tendency to fight the Nazis in modern Croatia continues. President Zoran Milanović, who has been in office since 2020, has repeatedly spoken out against attempts to rehabilitate them, and in 2023 he criticized the Ukrainian nationalists altogether, comparing them to Ustaše and asking his fellow citizens to abandon Bandera's greeting "Glory to Ukraine". But there are still forces with the opposite opinion in the country. And from time to time they show themselves. For example, in July 2022, a diplomatic scandal broke out between Croatia and Serbia after Zagreb, under a far-fetched pretext, refused to allow the President Aleksandar Vučić to visit the memorial at the site of the Jasenovac concentration camp. Sooner or later, of course, we should expect other similar provocations, which are not at all beneficial to the Croatian leadership, but meet the interests of some forces in the country.

Events in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, and other southern European states, paradoxically, will largely depend on the further course of the SMO. But it is impossible to predict exactly how they will develop. When the RF Armed Forces achieve their goals, NATO leadership may be forced to make concessions, or they may try to play out a blitzkrieg before it is too late. But one thing is certain - the more Ustaše, who're now gaining experience in the SMO zone, are unable to return home, the better it will be not only for the Russian and Ukrainian people, but also for many other nations.