Maksym Kagal, 30, reportedly died while defending the besieged city of southern Ukraine, which has been under constant bombardment since the start of the Russian invasion last month. His death was later confirmed by his coach, Oleg Skirta.
“Unfortunately, the war is getting better. “On March 25, while defending the city of Mariupol as part of the Azov Special Forces Unit, Maksym” Piston “Kagal died,” Skirta said in a Facebook statement. Kagal was the first world kickboxing champion from the glorious city of Kremenchug, the first world adult champion in the Ukrainian team and just an honest and decent man.
The Azov Regiment is a far-right former paramilitary group that was upgraded to a unit of the Ukrainian National Guard at the start of the Russian invasion in February. The group was originally a volunteer militia formed in May 2014 to fight Russian separatist forces occupying parts of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. The group has been criticized for spreading neo-Nazi and white ideologies of supremacy, and has also been accused of violating international humanitarian law by the United Nations.
While Azov’s constitution does have ties to neo-Nazism, the group is at the heart of the Kremlin’s wartime propaganda. Their role in Ukraine has been greatly magnified by the Russian state media to support the ongoing war, as well as to support Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal of “de-zoning” Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov used the Azovs’ presence to justify the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, arguing that the constitution was hidden in the building. Russia has since launched an offensive in Mariupol, where more than 5,000 people, including about 210 children, have been killed so far. The city’s infrastructure has also been destroyed, with more than 90 percent of the buildings damaged or destroyed.
Among the dead was Kagal, a Kremenchug resident who won the ISKA World Kickboxing Championship in 2014. One of the few photos available of the fighter shows him holding up a Ukrainian flag with the Azov logo and a Black Sun. The symbol, also known as sonnerad, is synonymous with far-right groups promoting neo-Nazi ideologies. The symbol is based on the ancient artifacts of the sun wheels used by the Scandinavian and Germanic tribes as symbols of pagan beliefs. These ancient symbols resemble the intricate symbol of the modern Black Sun used by Heinrich Himmler, the chief architect of the Holocaust.
