DISINFO: Russia is confronting modern Nazis and making gains on the battlefield
SUMMARY
Russian troops are fighting heroically with extraordinary courage because they are confronting the descendants of brutal Nazis. These enemies behave like beasts - hiding behind civilians, shooting innocent people on beaches, and showing no concern for women and children. Such cruelty defines the Nazis of both the past and present.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative accusing Ukraine of Nazism and Russophobia. This claim was made in the context of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.
Claims about Ukraine being a Nazi State, in order to justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine started in 2022 have already been widely debunked. See our article The Kremlin’s misuse of Nazism as a weapon of information manipulation.
Labelling Russia’s adversaries as Nazis is a widespread pro-Kremlin disinformation technique, and has been used by Russia to justify the invasion of Ukraine by portraying it as a “denazification operation”. Russia spent years preparing the information battleground before its kinetic attack, with “Nazi Ukraine” being one of its most prominent disinformation features.
In reality, Ukraine is not a Nazi state, does not have a Nazi ruling elite and Nazism is not Ukraine’s ideology. A law passed in Ukraine in 2015 bans Nazi and Communist ideologies. The law prohibits the public use and propaganda of Nazi and Communist symbols. Far-right groups do exist in Ukraine, like in any other country, but they have a minor influence on politics and social life. Finally, there is substantial evidence of Russian troops committing war crimes, while no comparable evidence implicates Ukrainian forces - for example, their practice of positioning military assets in residential areas. The Russian military also targets civilian infrastructure, including schools, kindergartens, hospitals, orphanages, and churches. One of the most notorious atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine was the airstrike on a maternity and children's hospital in Mariupol on March 9, 2022, which resulted in the deaths of three people, including a child, and left 17 others wounded, according to official reports.
Read similar disinformation cases claiming that The Kyiv regime is waging a war against civilians, history, the Russian language, culture, and monuments, that Ukrainian Nazis kill civilians, that Ukrainian neo-Nazis are shooting residents in the Kursk region and the West remains silent, that Ukraine is a terrorist state that openly supports terrorist groups in the Sahel region, and that Ukrainian neo-Nazis offer human sacrifices to pagan gods.