Eagle-eyed German television viewers spotted a symbol from their country’s distance past on television after an NTV crew stationed in Ukraine accidentally shot a Ukrainian tracked armored personnel carrier driving by with a swastika painted on its side.
“There are no Nazis in Ukraine. NTV took a snapshot – note the tank driving in the background. It has a familiar mark on its side,” one inquisitive user wrote, posting a clip from the report.
“Who wants tanks with a swastika in Ukraine? Except for Zelensky probably nobody. Thanks NTV for the video. There are no Nazis there, they must be Hindus,” another sarcastically wrote. (Prior to its adoption by the Nazis in the 1930s, the swastika was used as a Hindu symbol meaning well being, prosperity or good fortune.)
Others used the clip to try get the attention of politicians.
“Mrs. Strack-Zimmermann, would you like to take the risk that German tanks, decorated like in this video, could soon be chugging through Ukraine again? Can you really take responsibility for this? The video comes from NTV’s homepage and was broadcast on television,” one person wrote in an address to German Defense Committee chairwoman Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann amid the ongoing debate about whether Berlin should send main battle tanks to Kiev.
“When even NTV can no longer hides the truth. Why does Mr. Scholz support German Nazis and fascists in Ukraine?” another user asked, addressing his question to the Twitter accounts of the chancellor and the United Nations.
The swastika slip is just the latest blunder in the Western media’s ongoing efforts to ignore or whitewash the presence of extreme right forces among the Ukrainian military and especially among the volunteer nationalist battalions serving in the country’s National Guard.
Earlier this month, French media posted a heartwarming story of a boy in Kharkov who salutes each time a Ukrainian military vehicle passes by, but forgot to edit out a pair of little girls across the street in the background giving the Nazi salute.
Last week, Volodymyr Zelensky’s social media accounts posted and then quietly deleted a photo from his trip to Izyum after users spotted a SS-Totenkopf badge like the kind used by Nazi death camp administrators on the body armor of one of the president’s elite guards.