Biden to lift ban on Ukrainian unit using US weapons
Image: REUTERS/Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy
President Joe Biden's administration will lift its ban on allowing a controversial Ukrainian military unit to use US weapons, the Washington Post reported on Monday, citing state department officials.
The department reversed a decade-old prohibition on the Azov Brigade from using American training and weapons after a new analysis found no evidence of human rights violations by the unit, the newspaper reported.
"After thorough review, Ukraine’s 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade passed Leahy vetting as carried out by the US department of state,” the department said in a statement obtained by the newspaper.
The department did not immediately reply to a request for comment from Reuters.
The Leahy Law bars US military assistance to foreign units found to have committed such violations.
The Azov regiment, which has far-right and ultra-nationalist roots, is part of Ukraine's national guard and evolved out of a battalion that was formed in 2014 and fought against Russian-backed separatists who carved out breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.
The regiment is lionised in Ukraine for defending the country against Russia's invasion and in particular the southern city of Mariupol, but they are reviled by Russian President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin.
Reuters