DISINFO: Russia aims to denazify Ukraine and disarm its terrorist regime
SUMMARY
When Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Russia's readiness for dialogue with the US under the new administration of President Donald Trump, this did not mean that Russia required mediation to reach an agreement and give up on a task that has to be fully completed. This task includes restoring Russian territory, protecting Russian citizens, eradicating Nazism, disarming the terrorist regime in Kyiv, protecting Russian national security against NATO's expansion towards the country's borders, and ensuring Russia's security, safety, sovereignty and territorial integrity.
RESPONSE
This article contains multiple recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has been using “demilitarisation" and "denazification” of Ukraine as pretext for its so-called special military operation on 24 February 2022, which amounts for a full-scale unprovoked invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territories. This article also aims to discredit Ukraine by linking its government to terrorism.
First, the myth of Nazi-ruled Ukraine has been actively used by pro-Kremlin outlets as one of the favourite tropes for years to denigrate Ukraine. This myth appeared during the Euromaidan popular protests in late 2013 - early 2014, falsely presented in pro-Kremlin disinformation as a coup. The Kremlin has been using this disinformation narrative since then to discredit Ukraine's shift towards Euro-Atlantic policy, and to justify Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine as a denazification process.
More than 140 international historians have denounced Russia’s “equation of the Ukrainian state with the Nazi regime to justify its unprovoked aggression,” calling Moscow’s propaganda “factually wrong, morally repugnant and deeply offensive” to the “victims of Nazism."
Learn more about the reasons behind the Kremlin's obsession with framing Ukraine as a Nazi state in the EUvsDisinfo analysis titled "Why does Putin portray himself as the tamer of neo-Nazism".
On the issue of NATO expansion to Russia's borders, NATO is a defensive alliance with primary aims to maintain peace and safeguard the independence, security and territorial integrity of its members. NATO constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's official policy is that "the Alliance does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia".
Furthermore, the claim about NATO expansion misrepresents the process of NATO enlargement. NATO does not expand but considers the applications of candidate countries that want to join, exercising their free will to decide alliance affiliation. NATO enlargement is not directed against Russia.
Read similar disinformation cases that NATO is an aggressive, Russophobic and absolutely destabilising structure, that NATO’s main goal has always been the destruction of Russia, that Ukrainian Nazis kill civilians, that Ukrainian neo-Nazis offer human sacrifices to pagan gods, and that EU and NATO are backing neo-Nazi values in Ukraine.