What the Hell Are Ukrainian Fascists Doing in the Hong Kong Street Protests?

Hong Kong's pro-democracy activists were initially welcoming to the burly young Ukrainians who arrived on the front lines of their protests Sunday.

Then they noticed the swastika tattoos.

In photos that swiftly circulated on social media, it was clear the visitors’ political allegiances were radically incompatible with Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. One of the men had two swastikas tattooed behind his ear, while another had the white power symbols “14 88” tattooed on his shoulders and the initials WPSH (white power, skin head or sieg heil) across his stomach.

As the photos spread, so did the questions. Who exactly were these Ukrainian fascists, and what the hell were they doing wandering around the protest front lines in Hong Kong?

“Nobody here knows who they are. Nobody invited them,” said Hong Kong Hermit, a prominent online activist who tweeted out a warning about the fascist “protest tourists” Monday (he doesn’t want to be identified by name because he regularly receives threats from hard-line Chinese nationalists over his activism.)

“Once people were informed they are neo-Nazis, my mentions have been full of Hong Kongers outright rejecting them,” he told VICE News.

The men, it turns out, are well-known figures in Ukraine’s far-right scene, former soldiers for the ultranationalist Azov Battalion who fought Russian-backed separatists in the east. While they say they’re just tourists, their presence in Hong Kong has sparked concerns that they may be there to glean lessons from this city’s protest movement to push their ideology back home.

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