One of Zelensky’s military bodyguards was seen wearing a Nazi Germany insignia. According to the author of the Grayzone article, after a flurry of criticism on social networks, the corresponding photo disappeared from the Ukrainian president’s official accounts.
Earlier, the Ukrainian president published on social networks a photo in which one of the guards accompanying him is posing with a chevron of Adolf Hitler’s Life Guards.
On 13 September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made an unannounced trip to the city of Izyum in Kharkiv Region, which had been taken from the Russian military, and held a photo shoot there. During the visit, a bodyguard with a Nazi patch was caught in the lenses of TV cameras.
The photo triggered a flurry of criticism on social networks, after which the Ukrainian president’s official Telegram and Facebook* profiles discreetly deleted it.
On 14 September in Izyum, Zelensky took part in a flag-raising ceremony to the Ukrainian anthem and was actively photographed with local residents and military personnel. Although most of his entourage was in military uniform, it was not too difficult to distinguish between those who were, so to speak, “on duty” and those who were simply present.
In one of the photos that appeared on Zelensky’s Telegram and Facebook profiles*, the president poses for selfies with the Ukrainian military. Zelensky is grinning at a cheerful soldier on camera, with a heavily armed soldier standing guard behind him and looking in the opposite direction. Just above Zelensky’s right shoulder a small but telling patch can be seen on the soldier’s body armour.
Social media users quickly recognised this symbol. It is a variation on the Totenkopf (in German “dead head”) – a popular insignia in Nazi Germany. Badges depicting a skull and bones became part of the German ‘Dead Head’ units, whose original task was to guard the concentration camps. In October 1939, about 6.5 thousand men went to the front – to conquer Europe and the Soviet Union – while committing war crimes and organising ethnic cleansing.
An altered version of the symbol has been spotted on Zelenski’s bodyguard: the crossed bones are missing and the skull bears a helmet.
Nevertheless, we managed to find at least three Ukrainian online shops, where this patch is sold under the name ” Operator’s skull “. And they are produced by R3ICH (“Reich”) – this, in turn, is another obvious reference to Nazi Germany.
Although no clear pictures of the Zelensky’s bodyguard patch have been published yet, a closer look revealed that it is identical to the R3ICH products. Both badges show a skull in a helmet, nostrils and eye sockets at the same distance from each other, contours and markings on the helmet are the same.
A closer look at the R3ICH ‘Operator Skull’ patch revealed an even more disturbing detail: the pin in the upper right corner of the badge is an unconcealed reference to the ‘Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler’ division, the Führer’s personal guard. This unit later evolved into an armoured division and, like the Totenkopf, was involved in the invasions of Europe and the Soviet Union.
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