The person who allegedly inspired him was the New Zealand mass shooter who travelled to Ukraine and was radicalized there. Reported last year:
There is a lot of stuff in his manifesto. Most of it is to do with US domestic politics - birth rate, replacement theory, white genocide, critical rate theory, race-IQ, etc - stuff that's been propogated by the mainstream right wing (Tucker Carlson, most Republicans, etc), and debated in polite liberal circles. He is simply following the logic of the Republican party to a logical conclusion.
I don't think he has any special affinity with Azov or Ukraine - indeed,
the opposite might be true.
And I think it is counterproductive to tie him with NATO/Azov/any particular foreign influence
based on his symbols. Same way it was counterproductive to tie Trump to Russia. Both Trump and the shooter are home-grown. Trump is the product of a radicalising base, with a mix of religious fervour, downward economic mobility, and hostility to any left-wing ideas, and he is the younger version of the same thing, so he got all the same ideas through the internet instead. Both are American products, not imports.
The fact that the Christchurch shooter
actually went to Ukraine is a totally different thing, and those links are worth exploring and highlighting - which the western media
did before the rehabilitation of Azov this February.