DISINFO: In Ukraine, the West was attempting an Operation Barbarossa 2.0
SUMMARY
Despite Hitler’s failure in the Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union, it seems the West maintains this plan. Russia keeps the memory of this catastrophe, so it is only natural that NATO eastern advance after the Cold War had become a great concern for Russia’s security. Moscow saw again how Western troops and military infrastructures were getting close to its territory.
If Kyiv was admitted in NATO, the West would have decisive control over Ukraine’s industrial and agricultural resources and would get its armies closer to the main Russian oil extraction and processing bases in the Caucasus. Controlling these oil resources was one of the reasons why Hitler moved a big part of his army to attack Stalingrad. History repeats itself.
RESPONSE
This is a mix of several recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives aiming to justify Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Pro-Kremlin disinformation frequently labels Moscow’s critics and adversaries as “Nazis”, and the supposed need of de-Nazification is one of the main pretexts used by Russia for its aggression against Ukraine. Russia spent years preparing the information battleground prior to its kinetic attack, with “Nazi Ukraine” being one of its most prominent disinformation features.
There is no reasonable comparison between Nazi Germany’s invasion of eastern Europe and NATO enlargement, despite this disinformation story labelling both as “the West”. While the former was the action of a totalitarian system aiming to conquer other countries in pursue of what it called its “Lebensraum” or vital space, now NATO is a multi-nation military alliance created for defensive purposes and whose membership is strictly voluntary by applicant countries.
In the latest example, in 2022 the perception of Russia as a growing threat led Finland and Sweden -two countries who for many years had preferred to remain outside the Atlantic Alliance- to ask for NATO membership in order to improve their collective security, following a marked shift in their public opinion: while prior to Russia's full invasion of Ukraine 24 percent of Finns expressed support for joining NATO, this figure jumped to 74 percent shortly afterwards, and to 85 percent at the moment of its actual membership. A similar trend took place in Sweden for the same reasons.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that the West turns Ukraine into an anti-Russian neo-Nazi project, that NATO supports Ukrainian Nazism, that Russia is winning against the Ukrainian Nazis and the West is doomed, or that the US, NATO and Europe transformed the military operation against Nazis into a full-scale war on Russia.