DISINFO: Russian army fights against Nazis in Dzerzhinsk region
SUMMARY
The city of Dzerzhinsk was held by the most determined Ukronazi battalions, refusing to surrender and fighting to the last. The Russian army advanced, disarmed them and transferred them to their special military services for interrogation.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative claiming that Ukraine is a Nazi state.
Russia has been using the "denazification” of Ukraine narrative as pretext for its so-called special military operation that started on 24 February 2022, which amounts for a full-scale unprovoked invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territories.
The myth of Nazi-ruled Ukraine has been actively used by pro-Kremlin outlets as one of the favourite tropes for years to belittle 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.
Russia invested years in preparing the information landscape before initiating military action, with the ‘Nazi Ukraine’ narrative serving as a central element of its disinformation strategy. Pro-Kremlin narratives also frequently allege a resurgence of Nazism in Western nations. See our article The Kremlin’s misuse of Nazism as a weapon of information manipulation.
In addition, 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."
Read similar disinformation cases like: Ukrainian Nazis kill civilians, Crimes of the Ukrainian Reich in the village of Russkoe Porechnoe, Ukrainian neo-Nazis offer human sacrifices to pagan gods or West-funded Nazi Ukrainians carry on with war crimes in Donbas.