Far-Right fighters from Italy in Ukraine

How The News About Italian Far-Right Fighters In Ukraine Got Confused

Moon of Alabama,
16 July, 2019

Fast pacing news can be confusing. Reports appear which contradict each other. They miss some significant details. News that was fake news can suddenly becomes right. Correct versions of the news can become fake news.

Here is a live case that shows how and why this can happen.

Yesterday the Italian state police arrested a number of neo-nazis who had fought against the Russian supported separatists in Ukraine. The police found their large weapon cache. The arrest became international news because the haul included a complete French air-to-air missile that was originally delivered to Qatar. (It was likely sent from Qatar to Libya, in support of the Muslim Brotherhood side of the conflict there, and then sold off to some Italian smugglers.)

Mark Ames noted that the reporting about the case seemed to contradict the Italian police statement:

Mark Ames @MarkAmesExiled - 20:34 UTC - 15 Jul 2019Official Italian police statement says the Nazis with the missiles fought "against [pro-Russian] separatists". But BBC says the Italian Nazis fought *for* Russian-backed separatists. Someone's dezinformatsiya-ing 🤔 https://www.poliziadistato.it/articolo/225d2c47fb2c9ef299497390 …

Ames added screenshots of several retweets of the BBC report and of the original police statement. They support his assertion.


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The BBC report as well as the police statement have since changed. Fortunately both were saved multiple times at Archive.org.

The original BBC report, archived on July 15 at 15:04 UTC, read (emphasis added):

Anti-terrorism police in northern Italy have seized an air-to-air missile and other sophisticated weapons during raids on far-right extremist groups.Three people were arrested - two of them near Forli airport. Neo-Nazi propaganda was also seized, in raids in several cities.

Italian media say the raids were part of an investigation into Italian far-right help for Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.
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Italian media named those arrested as Fabio Del Bergiolo, 50, an Italian ex-customs officer and far-right Forza Nuova party activist; Alessandro Monti, 42, a Swiss national; and Fabio Bernardi, 51, also Italian.

On 3 July a court in Genoa jailed three men who were found guilty of fighting alongside the Russian-backed separatists who control a large swathe of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The second paragraph of the original Italian police statement, first archived on July 15 at 14:06 UTC, said (emphasis added):

Le indagini erano iniziate circa un anno fa quando la questura di Torino, coordinata dalla Direzione centrale della Polizia di prevenzione, aveva monitorato alcune persone legate a movimenti politici dell’ultra destra e che avevano combattuto nella regione ucraina del Donbass contro gli indipendentisti.

Translated (emphasis added):

The investigations had begun about a year ago when the police headquarters in Turin, coordinated by the Central Directorate of Prevention Police, had monitored some people linked to political movements of the ultra-right and who had fought in the Ukrainian region of Donbass against the separatists.

Several people had the impression that the BBC report claimed that yesterday's arrest was of people who had fought on the separatist side.

Caroline Orr @RVAwonk - 19:43 UTC - 15 Jul 2019Holy crap. Police in Italy seized a "combat ready" Qatari air-to-air missile, automatic weapons, and Nazi propaganda from an Italian neo-Nazi group linked to Russian-backed separatist forces in Ukraine
Italy seizes 'combat-ready' missile in raids on far right

The BBC report insinuated that the newly arrested neo-nazis fought on the separatist side, but it did not actually say that. It only claimed that the arrest came in the context of an investigation into some far-right support for Russian supported separatists.


The BBC writers may have been confused. It was the British news agency Reuters which first insinuated that the arrested neo-nazis had fought on the separatist side. It also truncated the police statement. The Reuters report, published by the New York Times on July 15, said (emphasis added):

Elite police forces searched properties across northern Italy following an investigation into Italians who had fought alongside Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, a police statement said.Three men were arrested, including a customs officer who had previously stood for Parliament for an extreme right party, the neo-fascist Forza Nuova.
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The investigation “came into being because of the activities of some Italian fighters with extremist backgrounds who had taken part in the armed conflict in the Ukrainian region of Donbass,” the police statement said.

The last paragraph is where Reuters leaves out the "against the separatists" addition from the written police statement. The Reuters correspondent was probably himself confused as the facts seemed to contradict themselves.

There is indeed an Italian investigation into right-wing Italians who fought on the separatist side. On August 6 2018 the Washington Post reported:

In Italy, it has long been an open secret that far-right activists were fighting in Donbass, the eastern Ukrainian region where pro-Russian separatists — with Russian government assistance — have been fighting the Ukrainian government since 2014. Italian authorities, however, didn’t seem interested in stopping them.That suddenly changed last week, when prosecutors in the northern Italian city of Genoa ordered the arrest of six men accused of joining pro-Russian militias in Donbass and recruiting others to their cause.
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One of the fugitives is Andrea Palmeri, a former leader of the far-right hooligan group Bulldog Lucca who had previously appeared on national TV boasting about fighting in Ukraine. Another one is Gabriele Carugati, the son of a politician from the far-right League party — the League is one of Italy’s two current governing parties — who had publicly praised her son’s choice to fight in Ukraine.

The confusion can be explained. There are several right-wing parties in Italy. The Lega Nord is a nationalist/populist party. It is currently led by the Deputy Prime Minister of Italy, Matteo Salvini. The Lega Nord is pro-Russian. It has a cooperation agreement with United Russia, the major Russian party that supports President Putin. There are allegations that it sought Russian money. It is thereby not astonishing that people associated with Lega Nord would fight on the side of the Russian supported separatist in the Donbass region.


The people arrested yesterday are associated with the Forza Nuova party which is much smaller than the Lega Nord and outright fascist:

Forza Nuova leader Roberto Fiore was once closely allied with the Ukrainian far-right Svoboda party, but following the beginning of the War in Donbass, Forza Nuova and Fiore "made a considerable shift to the pro-Russian camp."

One of the men arrested yesterday once was a candidate for Forza Nuova. It is not astonishing to learn that he fought on the side of Ukrainian fascists against the Donbass separatists.

Mainstream media like to put all right-wing parties into the same 'far-right' basket. But there is much more nuance on the far-right than most people assume. The nationalist right-wingers are often isolationists, while the fascist right is often internationalist. This is a bit like the conflict between Stalin and Trotsky in the last century. Both were 'communists' but:

After Lenin’s death, one of the leading questions in Russia was the question of internationalism – should they follow the ‘international revolution’ policy or the ‘socialism in one country’ policy? Trotsky sided with the former position, while Stalin sided with the latter.

The Italian police initially investigated right-wing people who had fought in the Ukraine on the side of the separatists. But yesterday's nab caught some that had fought on the other side.


The BBC has now corrected its report. The version archived at July 16 10:50 UTC change the third paragraph and added the relevant sentence from the original police statement:

The raids were part of an investigation into Italian far-right involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the Turin police said.
...
A police statement said the arrests were part of an investigation, started about a year ago, into far-right groups "who have fought in Ukraine's Donbass region against the separatists".

The date of the BBC report is still July 15 and there is no editorial hint that it was changed.
If the above is not confusing enough try this.


About the same time the BBC corrected its report the Italian state police changed theirs. The new version was archived on July 16 at 10:32 UTC. The second paragraph now reads:

Le indagini erano iniziate circa un anno fa quando la questura di Torino, coordinata dalla Direzione centrale della Polizia di prevenzione, aveva monitorato alcuni combattenti italiani con ideologie oltranziste responsabili in passato di aver preso parte al conflitto armato nella regione ucraina del Donbass.

The last three words of the original paragraph, "contro gli indipendentisti" = "against the separatists", have been deleted. It is now the more generic "who had fought in the Ukrainian region of Donbass".  At the end of the page it says: "15/07/2019 (modificato il 16/07/2019)". (screenshot)


The corrected BBC piece has now become false. It claims that the police statement linked in it says "who have fought in Ukraine's Donbass region against the separatists". But the linked police statement no longer says that. The corrected BBCpiece is suddenly fake news.
What can we learn from this fiasco?


The first lesson is to never trust the news. Does it make sense? Would outright fascist really fight on the side of the Donbass separatists against the Ukrainian Azov fascists who follow the same ideology? If in doubt one has to verify the news, as Mark Ames did, by looking at the original statements and sources.


The second lesson is to not blame the poor writers. If there are contradictions in the news it is probably because its authors lacked the full understanding of the situation. The news writers do not have the time to deeply research all issues. Their sources can be wrong. Especially initial wire reports are often incomplete or misleading. An editor may have interferred for political reasons.


The last lesson is that news can never replace the need for independent knowledge. It cost some time to gain that, but it is worth the effort.