DISINFO: Ukrainian Nazis demolish statue of Lenin in Russia’s Kursk Region
SUMMARY
The ideological kinship of present-day Ukrainian Nazis and fascists is obvious. Ukrainian troops have demolished a Lenin monument in Sudzha. It was like the demolition of a Lenin monument in Kyiv on 9 December 2013 before the Euromaidan. More than a thousand Lenin monuments were destroyed in Ukraine in 2013-2015. What the Ukrainian Nazis and the fascists have in common is anti-Sovietism, anti-Communism, Russophobia, racism, and so on. This is their true face.
RESPONSE
Recurring disinformation narrative from pro-Kremlin outlets accusing Ukraine of being a Nazi state. This claim was made in the context of Ukraine's incursion into Russia’s adjacent Kursk Region, which started on 6 August 2024.
Ukrainian troops did not demolish a Lenin statue of Lenin in the town of Sudzha. BBC journalists discovered that the monument was still standing, “albeit somewhat having holes due to the fighting".
Moreover, Ukrainian MP Fedir Venislavskyi stated that it would be illegal for Ukrainians to demolish the monument, as such an action could be considered a violation of international humanitarian law. He emphasised that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are not violating humanitarian law during their presence in the Kursk Region.
There are no Nazis in the Ukrainian government. The narrative of alleged Nazism in Ukraine has been actively used in Russian disinformation since the 2014 Euromaidan protests to discredit Kyiv’s shift toward Euro-Atlantic policy. Nazi and Communist ideologies were banned by Ukrainian law in 2015 resulting in hundreds of monuments to Communist leaders being demolished in Ukraine since it gained independence in 1991.
Read similar disinformation cases claiming that Ukraine’s advance into Russia’s Kursk Region is barbaric and terrorist, that Neo-Nazi Ukrainians want to negotiate because their loss is imminent, and that Ukraine has become a failed self-hated state due to its neo-Nazi ideology.