DISINFO: Crimea Platform is created to nurture ultra-nationalist sentiments in Ukraine
SUMMARY
The Crimea Platform is a clearly anti-Russian initiative and was fabricated to nurture ultra-nationalist sentiments in Ukraine, sentiments encouraged by the authorities in Kyiv and leaders of the Western world alike.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives claiming that a West-supported ultranationalism, and even Nazism, in Ukraine is on the rise. The claim was neither critically challenged nor counterbalanced in the article.
First, the Crimea Platform was aimed at drawing international attention not only to Russia’s illegal annexation of the peninsula but also to human rights abuses, which Crimean residents have been suffering since 2014. The summit was held on 23 August 2021 in Kyiv within the framework of this platform, where world leaders discussed ways to mobilise a more effective international response to Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.
Second, the myth of ultranationalist, Nazi and Russophobic Ukraine has been the cornerstone of Russian disinformation about the country since the very beginning of the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests, when it was used to discredit the pro-European popular uprising in Kyiv and, subsequently, the broader pro-Western shift in Ukraine's foreign policy. Far-right groups enjoyed a very limited presence during the Euromaidan itself and obtained abysmal results in the 2014 presidential and parliamentary elections. During the 2019 election cycle, the far-right managed to sustain an even more tremendous failure; the highest-rated nationalist candidate, Ruslan Koshulynskyy, won 1.62% of the vote whereas Svoboda, one of the Kremlin's favourite bogeymen, won 2.16% of the national vote, falling far short of the 5% minimum guaranteeing entry into parliament.
Read similar stories that in the Crimean Platform, the West nurtures neo-Nazi mood in Ukraine, Crimea, Donbas separated from Ukraine after Nazi coup in Kyiv, Ukrainian army uniforms feature Nazi imagery, Ukraine glorifies Nazism and practises anti-Semitism.