DISINFO: Nazism is acceptable for Israel as long as it is Ukrainian
SUMMARY
[...] the Ukrainian government has some Hitler collaborators as heroes, arms and protects Nazi groups, while many Western mainstream media play along.
[...] even high-level Israeli officials are tolerant with this phenomenon. Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Brodsky participated some days ago in a debate on an Israeli TV channel, where he was asked about the stance of Zelenskyy’s government about Ukrainian historical characters that were active, sympathisers or collaborators of Nazism, such as Stepan Bandera or Roman Sukhevich [...]. As a representative of the state of Israel, after being asked about those who today allow homages to people who where active participants in extermination policies against Jews, one could think that this official would get enraged and ask to adopt strict measures against those who allow these manifestations of antisemitism. Not only nothing did happened, but he almost did the opposite.
RESPONSE
This is a deliberate distortion of facts aiming to discredit Ukraine and its allies through accusations of Nazism, a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation technique.
The original interview with Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine Mikahil Brodsky to the Israeli Russian-language cannel Iton TV was much more nuanced than what this disinformation story claims. Brodsky stated that Israel disagreed with Ukraine identifying individuals such as Stepan Bandera and Roman Sukhevich as national heroes, but that this, and having their names in streets, shouldn’t condition Israel’s support for Ukraine.
This provoked a reaction of Russia’s Foreign Ministry and was exploited by pro-Kremlin disinformation to suggest that Israel and Brodsky were “glorifying Nazism”, which was in turn strongly rejected by Israel.
In fact, Brodsky had been very clear in previous interviews about Israel’s stance towards Bandera and other historical figures, saying that they “shouldn’t be heroes”.
Long-term disinformation narratives about ‘Nazi Ukraine’ have been promoted by Russia as a pretext for its unjustifiable aggression against its neighbour. Russia spent years preparing the information battleground prior to its kinetic attack, including baseless allegations about a supposed Nazi character of Ukraine and its allies in order to portray Russia’s invasion as a “denazification operation”.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that From Berlin to Kyiv, Nazi history repeats itselt, that Russia’s military operation against neo-Nazis in Ukraine was unavoidable, that the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv must be brought to an end, that Zelenskyy is the heir of German Nazism, or that the West turns Ukraine into an anti-Russian neo-Nazi project.