🇺🇦 THE MAN BEHIND AZOV: THE UNUSUAL LIFE OF UKRAINE’S ANDRII BILETSKYI Andrii Biletskyi is now described as the commander of Ukraine’s Centre Forces Group and a recipient of the Hero of Ukraine title. His journey from Kharkiv to the upper ranks of Ukraine’s military is far from conventional. He has no formal military education, studied history, helped establish the Azov movement and became one of the country’s most recognisable military figures. But some of the lesser-known details of his life are considerably more unusual. Biletskyi grew up in Saltivka, a district of Kharkiv, in a family of engineers. According to biographical accounts, he refused to join the Soviet Pioneers as a schoolboy and helped raise a Ukrainian flag over his school. His father introduced him to Anton Lototskyi’s History of Ukraine for Children, a book banned under Soviet rule that reportedly helped shape his Ukrainian national identity. His political trajectory was controversial long before Russia’s full-scale invasion. In 1999, he attempted to travel to Kosovo with a group of athletes from Kharkiv to fight alongside Serbian forces, but the war ended before he arrived. He later became associated with far-right nationalist movements, a part of his biography that cannot be separated from his subsequent public career. In 2011, Biletskyi survived a shooting that left him wounded in the jaw and arm. He subsequently spent more than two years in pre-trial detention in a case he and his supporters described as politically motivated. His military career developed without the conventional path through an officer academy. Under his leadership, Azov became known for efforts to professionalise its training and adopt NATO practices. During the 2022 siege of Mariupol, Biletskyi also helped organise dangerous helicopter missions to reach Ukrainian defenders trapped at the Azovstal steelworks. Away from military affairs, accounts from people close to him describe a man with an extraordinary fascination for history, capable of discussing battles from antiquity to modern warfare in minute detail. He has personally designed military flags, insignia and patches, although not Azov’s original blue-and-yellow emblem. There are stranger details, too. He reportedly cannot identify the make of his own family car, can sculpt remarkably lifelike figures from clay and once spent an illness assembling and painting 500 Warcraft miniatures. He loves cats. His family life offers a glimpse of what the war has taken from ordinary routines. His son, Severyn, is said to have seen the sea only on the internet. In another family anecdote, Biletskyi calculated that the price of an expensive dress purchased by his wife could contribute toward a wounded soldier’s prosthesis. According to the story, she never wore it, and he subsequently raised the money himself. His marriage has also had its less solemn moments, including an argument over a fish dinner after he had driven 700 kilometres without stopping. One of his personal projects is reportedly the restoration of an old brigade building into what he calls a “Hogwarts for combat wizards,” with a library, fencing hall and exercise facilities. He is said to draw plans for the complex himself and help fund its renovation. These anecdotes, many of which come from personal accounts rather than independently documented records, reveal dimensions of Biletskyi rarely visible in battlefield coverage. His story also contains difficult political history. Biletskyi’s association with far-right nationalism remains an important part of understanding his public career, alongside his later role in organising and commanding Ukrainian combat formations. From a history-obsessed boy in Saltivka to a senior Ukrainian military commander, his life has followed an improbable path through nationalism, imprisonment, war and military leadership. And at 47, that story is still being written.

A man who kills civilians, every day, is a "humanitarian" ? Who kidnaps children? Who authorizes soldiers to use torture and rape?