Watching the blood sports at a  festival for far-right extremists.

This was the summer of 2019, and I had gone  to Ukraine to learn more about these groups.

From the crowds, one thing  seemed pretty clear about them: 

They weren't bothered by the fact that this  event was organized by the Azov movement,

a far-right group that has increasingly  been linked to violence around the world.

The shooter is linked to a 74-page manifesto  filled with white supremacist rhetoric.

FBI agents say he expressed a desire  to travel to Ukraine to fight with a  

far-right paramilitary group.

At least one member  of an American hate group also trained in Ukraine,

with Azov Battalion.

According to the FBI domestic  terrorists killed 39 people in fiscal year 2019

making it the most deadly year for domestic  terrorism since the 1995 Oklahoma city bombing.

The threat of white nationalism has evolved since  Oklahoma city where a domestic terrorist used

a truck bomb to kill at least 168 people. Police  don't tend to see such terrorists as lone wolves  

acting in isolation anymore. It's become clear to  law enforcement that these attackers often have  

links to a global network, one with common goals  and a shared ideology.

We are looking very hard

at white supremacists or Neo-Nazis here connecting  through social media online with like-minded  

individuals overseas and in some cases actually  traveling overseas to train.

Over the last few years experts in violent extremism have grown  especially alarmed about the Azov movement  

The group emerged from the revolution that  swept across Ukraine in 2014 and it has  

gotten a lot stronger amid the ongoing war  with pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine  

The fighting in that region has become kind of  ideal breeding ground for militias like Azov.

At their public events one thing that surprised  me was how many Ukrainians tend to see Azov  

not as militants or extremists but as war heroes.  In Kiev, the capital, I watched an independence day  

parade where veterans of the Azov Battalion  marched alongside other volunteer militias  

surrounded by cheering crowds who thanked  them for defending Ukraine against Russia.

But even at the march there were signs of the  far-right ideology that's so common inside Azov  

The symbols on their flags have been especially  controversial Azov says it combines the letters  

I and N for "idea of nation" but extremism experts  see it as an emblem of Nazism.

The official symbol of Azov it's a version of Wolfsangel. It was one of the  symbols of one of the SS divisions during

World War II.It is one of more or less usual symbols for  Neo-Nazi groups all over the world.

And it's not just about their symbols when it was founded  in 2014, Azov drew many of its commanders and  

recruits from Ukraine's most notorious far-right  groups, including outright Neo-Nazis.

We basically recruited everyone who could hold weapons in  their hand when Ukrainian state was paralyzed  

and the defense of Ukrainian state was totally in  the hand of Ukrainian volunteers. So there were many  

war adventurers guys who believed that they're are on kind of an ideological tour  

to save maybe the future of the west and so on and  so forth so--

The future of the white race?

Yes, yes.

Azov's paramilitary wing is now a major  fighting force with its own bases and  

training grounds near the front lines of the war  against pro-Russian forces. After the veterans'  

parade in Kiev I interviewed Andriy Biletsky  who founded the Azov movement in 2014.

Azov's leaders have also tried to break into  politics. They failed to win any seats in  

Parliament during the most recent elections in  2019, but their plans in Ukraine are ambitious.

What worries officials in the west is Azov's  recruitment strategy. It's tried hard to build  

friendships with far-right groups around the  world especially in the U.S. and Europe.

During my visit in 2019, I spent a day at one of the  biggest recruitment events in Azov's history.  

Thousands of people showed up for a day  of fighting sports and blatant propaganda. 

There were Neo-Nazi symbols tattoos  and posters all over the place,

and many in the crowd seem pretty  receptive to Azov's far-right ideology.

Events like this also tend to attract recruits  from abroad. One of the ones I met was named  

Robin, who just arrived in Ukraine from Sweden,  where he told me he's wanted for hate crimes.

This is so hard to explain the surroundings for  someone who's watching this you know, it's surreal.  

It's like, I don't know, it's like something you  read about, the great Germany before, you know, in  

the 1920s. It's a revival of the inter-european soul. And it's all happening here in Ukraine.

Afterward we rode back to the Azov base in northern Kiev,  where Azov commanders had allowed Robin to stay  

as a potential recruit.

We are aryans and we will  rise again. That's a-- that's a way of

life, you know, and after the war in Germany  we went back to the benches, uh school benches,

but now he will rise again.

Are they Neo-Nazis  as an organization? No. Have they had Neo-Nazis

in their organization? I would say look at the U.S.  Army and you would find Neo-Nazis as well.

Dave is an American expat and U.S. Military veteran who  has volunteered to help Ukraine's national guard,

and he's met a lot of the recruits who'd come to  join Azov.

You only need one of these guys to kind

of go home and and uh commit an act of terrorism  to then really damage the reputation of Ukraine  

in the eyes of the world, right? So that, I mean, that's really a risk that Ukraine faces. Do you  

think they're taking it seriously enough?

Now? Yes.

A few weeks later, Robin, the Swede

I met at that festival wrote me that he was  going to the front lines to join the fight  

With recruits like this, it's little wonder  that u.s officials see Azov as a threat.

Experts point out that the pace of white supremacist  terrorism has intensified with new incidents  

frequently filling the headlines. 22 gunned down  at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Two killed near  

a synagogue in Halle, Germany. Nine more in  an attack on two shisha bars near Frankfurt,  

and a series of arrests exposing far-right  terror plots across the U.S. and Europe.

One tally reported an increase of 320 percent in such  attacks in western countries between 2014 and 2019