Ukrainian Military's Complicated Relationship With Nazi Imagery Fuels Russian Propaganda

Ukrainian soldiers and emergency workers have been seen wearing patches featuring symbols made notorious by Germany and have become part of the iconography of far-right hate groups.
The use of these symbols risks fueling Russian propaganda and spreading imagery that the West has spent a half-century trying to eliminate.
Ukraine has worked for years through legislation and military restructuring to contain a fringe far-right movement whose members proudly wear symbols steeped in Nazi history and espouse views hostile to leftists, L.G.B.T.Q. movements and ethnic minorities.
The iconography of these groups, including a skull-and-crossbones patch worn by concentration camp guards and a symbol known as the Black Sun, now appears with some regularity on the uniforms of soldiers fighting on the front line, including soldiers who say the imagery symbolizes Ukrainian sovereignty and pride, not Nazism.
The Ukrainian military's complicated relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under both Soviet and German occupation during World War II, has become especially delicate because President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has falsely declared Ukraine to be a Nazi state, a claim he has used to justify his illegal invasion.