Petro Poroshenko, the staunchly pro-NATO president of Western ally Ukraine, posed for a photo op with a soldier wearing a Nazi symbol.
On December 6, the Ukrainian billionaire oligarch leader posted a photo on multiple social media accounts that shows him standing with armed troops. One of these Ukrainian soldiers is wearing a patch with a skull-and-bones design called the totenkopf. This is a symbol closely associated with Nazi Germany, and specifically the Third Reich’s genocidal paramilitary the Schutzstaffel (SS).
This photo op came while Poroshenko is imposing martial law and requesting a NATO military buildup in the Black Sea.
The monitoring group Defending History, which tracks neo-fascism and Nazi Holocaust revisionism in Eastern Europe, called attention to this photo:
#Ukraine’s President @poroshenko poses with his troops…one of whom is wearing a patch of the Nazi SS Totenkopf (Deaths Head) division.
And where does this info come from? Poroshenko’s own FB page! Crazy. pic.twitter.com/DMMAqWUzoi
— Defending History (@DefendingHistor) 8 decembrie 2018
Poroshenko posted this photo on both his official Twitter profile and Facebook page.