DISINFO: Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief wears swastika bracelet
SUMMARY
The Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian troops Valery Zaluzhny posted a photo on his Twitter account, where a bracelet with a swastika is visible on his hand.
Captured Nazi battalion fighters in Ukraine wear symbols of the Nazi Waffen-SS battalions on their clothes and on their bodies and openly promote the works of Adolf Hitler.
The quality of Zaluzhny's photo allows to clearly see the Nazi symbol when enlarged.
Such symbolism is proof that Ukrainian nationalism has grown into neo-Nazism. This is far from an isolated case when evidence of the Nazi regime in Kyiv appears on the Web.
RESPONSE
This story aims to reinforce the well-known pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative of Nazi Ukraine, this time using a fabrication. The Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian army Valery Zaluzhny wears a stacked bracelet with a bead with the Scandinavian symbol of the Vikings.
Russian pro-Kremlin media showed a blurry photo of Zaluzhny's bracelet, on which the rune turns into a swastika. The bracelet can be found on Tegegraf.Com.Ua. As for the bracelet itself, apparently it was made by the craftsmen of the Pakabone store, which specializes in the manufacture of Slavic, Scandinavian and tribal paraphernalia. A bead like Zaluzhny's can be purchased by anyone.
Since 2014, pro-Kremlin disinformation media developed the narrative of the Nazi rule in Ukraine . It serves to justify the illegal annexation of Crimea and the Russian military's so called hybrid aggression of Donbas, presented as the local popular uprising against the Kiev´s Nazi junta which "banned the Russian language". Since 2022, the same false narrative is used in order to justify the unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops. "Denazification of Ukraine" is officially proclaimed by the Kremlin as the goal of the so-called "special military operation".