On May 3, University of Ottawa Professor Paul Robinson testified before the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development on the human rights situation in Russia and Ukraine. A transcript of his remarks are below.

There was no surrender by Azov National Battalion militants, Kiev assures us. There was only an “evacuation” (not clear to where), and this bit of demagoguery was happily picked up by both Ukrainian and world mass media. The effort to conceal the embarrassing truth about the situation on the frontlines is consistent with how Kiev explains the catastrophic state of the economy.

Thank God, Russia eschews any triumphalism over the surrender of the so-called neo-Nazi Azov regiment in the Azovstal factory complex in Mariupol. The Defence Ministry in Moscow announced on Friday that a total of 2,439 “Azov Nazis” and Ukrainian servicemen had laid down their arms since May 16, and that the entire Azovstal complex is now under control of Russian forces.

Let us begin with my lede, we shall answer the question posed by my title, and then circle back to this point later. In a word, No. The Azov Nazis were not good fighters.

“In so many ways Canada has provoked this conflict in Ukraine.”

The Ukrainian government is quickly learning that it can say anything, literally anything at all, about what’s happening on the ground there and get it uncritically reported as an actual news story by the mainstream western press.

“Ukrainian Army Soldiers Shot Into My Home and Burned All My Things,” Says Elderly Luhansk Woman

The Senate passed a $40 billion emergency aid package for Ukraine on Thursday, but with a small group of isolationist Republicans loudly criticizing the spending and the war entering a new and complicated phase, continued bipartisan support is not guaranteed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a goal of his war in Ukraine the ‘denazification’ of the country. Kremlin propagandists often refer to the Maidan regime as a ‘Nazi junta’ and fascist regime.

Chris Bryant, the British MP who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Russia, appears to be either a fool or knave. He confuses banning Russian tennis players from Wimbledon with defeating Moscow in war. And demagogues anyone who questions punishing people who have done nothing other than be born in Russia.