The strategic aim of the US and European governments, particularly Germany, is to incorporate Ukraine into the Western sphere of influence without jeopardizing their access to the important Russian market and resources or provoking a direct military confrontation with a nuclear power. To this end, they have pressured Poroshenko to reach an accommodation with Putin, and in doing so have had to counter far right pressure on the vacillating Ukrainian president from the opposite direction. The Azov battalion numbers only in the hundreds, but is one of dozens of similar volunteer detachments organized under the auspices of Andriy Parubiy, Oleh Lyashko, Ihor Kolomoyskyi and other far right politicians and oligarchs.
The important consideration is not the size of the Azov battalion, but how much its mood and outlook is shared by the other paramilitary units and, most important, by how much it would come to be shared by the mass of the population outside the Donbass region which, one expects, holds these front line fighters in high regard and would see the Ukrainian far right parties and militias as the alternative if there is a continued loss of confidence in the pro-Western Poroshenko government.