Does the formation of Ukrainian Edelweiss 10th Mountain Assault Brigade glorify Operation Edelweiss by Nazi Germany and refer to appearing of neo-nazism in Ukraine? No, that's not true: the two events with the same name have no relation to each other and the Ukrainian army unit has no connection to Nazism.
The story originated from a Belarusian state TV program "Ponyatnaya Politika" ("Transparent Politics") with a video fragment (archived here) shared on TikTok where it was published by poniatnayapolitika on September 16, 2023. The text on the video (translated from Russian by Lead Stories staff) reads:
How the Ukrainian Independence Day and Edelweiss operation in Greece by German division is connected. Watch the latest release of "Ponyatnaya Politika" program on YouTube.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Sep 20 07:42:34 2023 UTC)
The name Edelweiss was given to the brigade based on the mountainous location of the unit, in Kolomyia, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. As noted by Edelweiss brigade commander Mkhaylo Sydorenko (translated from Ukrainian): "We are like that mountain flower, got our teeth into our home ground, grew roots. Snow, rain, wind - we stand, we fight the enemy".
The baseless narrative of the revival of Nazism in Ukraine by Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian authorities emerged in 2014 and has been used as a pretext for starting what Putin calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine and what resulted in the Russian war of aggression.
Ukrainian law bans totalitarian regimes' propaganda and the use of their symbols.
The Operation Edelweiss of Nazi Germany was the German plan in 1942 to seize the fertile land of the Caucasus region and to take the oilfields in the south-west of Maykop, around Grozny, and near Baku on the coast of the Caspian Sea.
