A female sniper who has fought in the ranks of one of Ukraine’s most notorious neo-Nazi volunteer units has been glorified by The Daily Mail and The Sun, with the outlets interviewing her and posting images and video of her shooting “Russian separatists” – the term used by Kiev and its Western allies to disparage independence-seeking residents of the war-torn eastern Ukraine.
Olena Bilozerska, 42 joined the Praviy Sektor ("Right Sector") paramilitary group in 2014 after serving as an embedded reporter with the Azov Regiment, another neo-fascist militia unit. Despite her ties to these organisations, she has been celebrated by Western officials and media, invited to speak at a NATO conference in 2019, chronicled by “Real Women Real Stories,” a YouTube channel founded by an Israeli banker and journalist, and is operating her own YouTube channel.
In its report on Bilozerska, The Sun praised the “Femme fatale” sniper, saying she has “become a national hero after chilling footage was posted showing her killing two Russian soldiers.” The tabloid’s report uses the term “Russian soldiers” and “Russian separatists” interchangeably, and includes the gruesome video of the sniper using her rifle’s night vision scope to shoot and kill two unidentified men and wounding a third.
“Three cracks of outgoing fire from volunteer fighter Olena’s Zbroyar Z-10 sniper rifle can be heard as her victim collapses with fatal wounds. She then fixes her crosshairs on a comrade rushing to his aid –and wounds him with more shots before hitting a third soldier whose lifeless body crumples back into the trench,” The Sun’s glowing report reads.
Screengrab of Sun Report Praising "Hero" Ukrainian Neo-Nazi sniper.
© Photo : The Sun
The sniper told the outlet that she felt "no remorse" about the people she’s killed and would kill again “if the Russians decide to come.”
“Moral anguish about the murder of a human was invented by people far from war. An armed person is not a person, but a target,” Bilozerska said. The sniper added that she feels a sense of “pleasure of a job well done” after killing.
The Daily Mail issued a similar report on the sniper, complete with an interview and the same night scope video. The outlet described Bilozerska as “something of a celebrity in Ukraine, having written a best-selling book called Diary of an Illegal Soldier” and as someone “well-known even before the war as her oppositional journalism found her under threat of imprisonment by the old hardline regime of Viktor Yanukovych,” i.e. the democratically-elected president overthrown in an EU and US-backed coup in 2014.
Report on neo-Nazi Ukrainian sniper by The Daily Mail.
© Photo : The Daily Mail
Bilozerska explained to the outlet that she has been demobilised since 2020 and is now a member of Ukraine’s territorial defence forces reserves. Bilozerska also said that “Ukrainians are now very grateful to Britain for military assistance,” and that she’s “seen lots of people writing on social networks ‘God save the Queen.'"
Awkward Associations
Western officials and media have spent years downplaying the neo-Nazi links of organizations like the Right Sector and the Azov, notwithstanding the militias’ open use of neo-Nazi and SS symbols and regalia. In Ukraine, these groups are known for their participation on the front lines in the civil conflict in the Donbass, but also for spearheading crackdowns on opposition media. They are also known for taking to the streets to protest when sensing that Kiev leaders may be considering implementing the Minsk Agreements on Ukrainian peace, as President Volodymyr Zelensky briefly attempted to do when he came into office in 2019.
The FBI has investigated the Ukrainian neo-fascist militias after discovering that US citizens were traveling to Ukraine and joining the ranks of groups like Azov and learning skills like bomb-making. In 2016, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights charged the Azov Regiment with war crimes. However, powerful Washington-based groups like the Atlantic Council have lobbied the State Department to avoid listing the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist battalions as terrorist organisations, citing their usefulness in a potential conflict against Russia.