This is a teaser of an interview I did with Yasha Levine. This interview with

Yasha Levine was recorded Wednesday evening just before we learned that Putin

had invaded Ukraine. Yasha Levine is a Soviet-American immigrant, the author of

the book Surveillance Valley, the secret military history of the Internet, and the

co-host of the podcast The Russians. You can find his writing at yasha.substech.com

and you can follow him on Twitter at Yasha Levine. You can find the full

interview at patreon.com slash the KV helpershow. Again, that's patreon.com slash

the KV helpershow.

If you don't mind, just tell people a little bit about the as-off. This will get you

in a good mood. This will cheer you up.

Well, you know, the as-up Italian is one of these sort of paramilitary. It used to be

a paramilitary force that was formed in the early days of the

after the Maidan revolution. It was a way of defending Ukraine from, you know, like

Russian aggression, you know, in the eastern part of the country. And it was a

paramilitary force with overt Nazi symbology. And it was financed by the

Ukrainian oligarchs in the beginning. The as-off Italian is overtly neofascist,

like overtly neofascist, in terms of the insignias that they have, in terms of

what the people who were interviewed who talked about, you know, and so that's

how it was formed. As-up Italian was formed, kind of, to fight. It's kind of a

Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. And there were some pretty

serious battles in the early part of that war. It's mostly quite a down and

it's just them shelling on the front lines these days. But there used to, you know,

...