Putin has said that “De-Nazification” of Ukraine is one of his key objectives, and that it is the main justification for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin media even brands all those who oppose Russian aggression as “Neo-Nazis.” At the onset of the invasion, Russian propaganda clearly distinguished between the Ukrainian “fraternal people” and...

Putin has said that “De-Nazification” of Ukraine is one of his key objectives, and that it is the main justification for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin media even brands all those who oppose Russian aggression as “Neo-Nazis.”

At the onset of the invasion, Russian propaganda clearly distinguished between the Ukrainian “fraternal people” and the “criminal regime” in Kyiv. In his address in the early hours of 24 February, Putin said, addressing the Armed Forces of Ukraine: “Take power into your own hands. It looks like it will be easier for us to come to terms with you than with this gang of drug addicts and Neo-Nazis, who settled in Kyiv and took the entire Ukrainian people hostage.”

Later, the Kremlin and the pro-government media began to substitute certain concepts: “nationalists” and “Neo-Nazis” became synonymous with the Ukrainian Army, volunteer battalions, and territorial defence forces, which have put up massive resistance against the Russian invaders. Pro-Kremlin media headlines and newscast rhetoric are full of phrases about “hours spent under targeted fire by nationalists” or Russian units and their proxies “who managed to drive nationalists out of the most residential areas in the city.”

But still after 8 weeks of war, the Kremlin propagandists refer to Ukrainians daring to oppose Russian occupation as “Nazis.” For example, for Margarita Simonyan, the head of one of the Kremlin’s main mouthpieces, RT, it came as an unpleasant surprise that “a significant part of Ukraine was engulfed in the madness of Nazism.” On one of her panel shows, she said: “Previously, I also thought that there were a few of them, but I definitely could not imagine that there were so many!”

Why does Russian propaganda massively and indiscriminately brand all Ukrainians as Nazis? First of all, it’s about dehumanising the nation in the eyes of the Russians. The Kremlin needs to give them something that will make Russians hate Ukrainians and justify in their eyes the atrocities committed against Ukrainians by the Russian military, the annihilation of Ukrainian cities. How could this be done? It turned out to be that simple: to an average Russian, who has been under the harsh influence of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine for years, it’s enough to say: “You know what? They are all Nazis there, we shouldn’t feel sorry for them, it’s okay to kill them all!” Which is what the Russian forces are doing.

Meanwhile, in Russia, people get detained and prosecuted for phrases such as “No to fascism” and “fascism shall not pass” – such slogans are now equated with “discrediting” the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

Putin’s statements that the power in Ukraine is controlled by neo-Nazis is blatant falsehood. As any other country, Ukraine has some problems with far-right movements. In Russia itself, there are no fewer ultra-right, Neo-Nazi and nationalist, sharply xenophobic groups and organizations close to them in spirit. Moreover, there are people today in the Russian circles of power who used to openly back extremely nationalist views and participated in the infamous “Russian Marches.” Traditionally, Russian law enforcement are trying to find a “Ukrainian trace” in pretty much anything, presenting ultra-right groups as “branches of Ukrainian radical movements.”

The Russian ultra-right are frequently in the news focus, and there are still plenty of skinhead gangs that go out terrorising and murdering representatives of various Central Asian ethnic groups, while caveman nationalists keep chanting their favourite “Moscow is for Muscovites” song.

The uncomfortable truth is that Russia has long and regularly made accusations against former Soviet republics about supporting neo-Nazism, But the reality as borne out by the obscene behaviour of the Red Army in Ukraine is that Russia is itself the main breeding ground for today’s Nazis, and it is this evil that the world must address urgently and destroy the demon before it spreads.

  • culpritus [any]
    ·
    9 months ago

    https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2019/08/14/the-russians-and-ukrainians-translating-the-christchurch-shooters-manifesto/

    August 14, 2019

    The Russians and Ukrainians Translating the Christchurch Shooter’s Manifesto

    In Ukraine, one fan of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto has done far more than just share or promote a translation.

    This fan is the administrator of a Ukrainian-language Telegram channel with nearly 1,000 subscribers (we have chosen not identify the channel) that features content openly praising and glorifying the Christchurch shooter as well as sharing uncensored neo-Nazi content that explicitly encourages violence. This administrator also shared a Ukrainian translation of the El Paso shooter’s manifesto only two days after the attacks.

    Another interested reader in the manifesto, another post suggests, is a member of neo-Nazi movement Karpatska Sich (Карпатська Січ) — a group who, as the Bellingcat Monitoring Project documented, was involved in actions against KyivPride in June 2019. In a post on their own Telegram channel on August 14, Karpatska Sich openly urged its members to purchase a copy of the translation, encouraging its members to “get inspired” by it.

    Among the books the interested reader has in their collection are at least three books published by the literature club of the Azov movement, as well as a book about radical Ukrainian integral nationalist ideologue Dmytro Dontsov. Also visible is a knife featuring the SS motto and morale patches from two different Ukrainian brands popular with members of the far-right.

    Ironically, however, the biggest online promoters of a Russian-language translation of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto aren’t in Russia: they’re in Ukraine. A Kyiv-based neo-Nazi group with roots in Russia, Wotanjugend, is behind the promotion if not the translation itself of the manifesto.

    According to the authors of Militant Right-Wing Extremism in Putin’s Russia: Legacies, Forms and Threats, Wotanjugend developed during the 2000s among the hardcore neo-Nazi music scene in Russia, with leaders and members who “styled themselves as an elite neo-Nazi avant-garde.” Many of Wotanjugend’s leaders, being anti-Kremlin and anti-Putin, were supporters of the protests on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv that mushroomed into a revolution in February 2014.

    As Russian-led forces in eastern Ukraine set off war in April 2014, some Wotanjugend members came to fight with far-right battalions, including the Azov Battalion. Later in 2014 two of Wotanjugend’s leaders, Alexey Levkin and Ivan Mikheev, moved to Ukraine where they remain today.

    Since coming to Ukraine, Wotanjugend has been able to act openly and with clear connections to the Azov movement. Levkin, for example, has described himself as an “ideologist” with Azov’ National Militia. A group with himself and another Azov figure, Olena Semenyaka, have organized a neo-Nazi record label and shop that sells music with racist, anti-Semitic lyrics and paraphernalia with open Nazi symbolism at the Azov movement’s Cossack House, just off Maidan Nezalezhnosti in central Kyiv.

    In May 2019, Wotanjugend hosted an event called “Fuhrernight” in Kyiv, which featured Nazi flags and photos of Adolf Hitler on an altar surrounded by candles.