Russia-Ukraine: Ukrainians calling Russians “Nazis” are more correct.
Russian myth-making about “Ukrainian Nazis” is even older than complaints over NATO expansion and dates all the way back to Soviet World War II propaganda, Peter Dickinson says.
For decades, Moscow has exaggerated wartime cooperation between Ukrainian nationalist groups and the Third Reich while conveniently ignoring the far more consequential Nazi-Soviet Pact.
By conflating Ukraine’s centuries-old liberation movement with Nazism, generations of Kremlin leaders have sought to render Ukrainian national identity toxic in the eyes of domestic and international audiences alike.
Putin’s enthusiasm for the “Nazi Ukraine” trope is very much in line with his broader efforts to place the Soviet World War II experience at the heart of modern Russian identity.
In Putin’s Russia, accusations of Nazism are a routine feature of the public discourse and have been leveled against a dizzying array of individuals, organizations, and entire countries, but Ukraine remains by far the most popular target.
Nothing highlights the absurdity of Russia’s “Nazi Ukraine” allegations better than the rise of Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Ukrainian President is both Jewish and a native Russian speaker. According to the Kremlin, this should make him deeply unappealing to Ukrainian voters.
On the contrary, Zelenskyy was elected president by a record margin and subsequently secured a unique parliamentary majority for his newly formed political party.
This success was all the more remarkable as it was achieved during wartime elections held amid an atmosphere of heightened patriotic fervor.
Since the start of the invasion, Russia’s failing efforts to portray Ukraine as a Nazi state have forced Moscow into ever more implausible mental gymnastics.
Unable to produce any actual Ukrainian Nazis, regime officials and propaganda proxies have attempted to argue that the very idea of an independent Ukraine is in itself a Nazi concept, while also acknowledging that Putin’s stated war aim of “de-Nazification” in practice means the “de-Ukrainization” of Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s confusion was perhaps most immediately evident in the bizarre and disgraceful anti-Semitic comments made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a May appearance on Italian TV program Zona Bianca.
When asked to address the obvious contradictions between Russia’s “Nazi Ukraine” claims and the fact that Ukraine has a Jewish president, Lavrov responded by declaring that Adolf Hitler also had “Jewish blood.”
His statement sparked a wave of global condemnation, with Putin eventually forced to intervene and offer a personal apology to Israeli leaders.
Ukrainians calling Russians “Nazis” are more correct.
