Photo: Raskrinkavanje.ba
Since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, Russian propaganda has tried to portray this country as responsible for the war and war crimes, even declaring it a “Nazi state”.
At the end of March 2022, the Russian army withdrew from the Ukrainian city of Bucha. When the Ukrainian army entered the city on April 3, they found bodies of dozens of victims of the Russian occupation. Disturbing photos of murdered people lying on the streets with their hands tied soon made headlines around the world.
The city was under the control of Russian forces for a little over a month. In August 2022, after months of investigation, Ukrainian officials announced that the remains of at least 458 victims, mostly civilians, including women and children, had been found in Bucha.
Russian officials denied responsibility for the massacre, resorting to contradictory claims that the crimes were staged or that the Ukrainian army was responsible for them. Russian state media both inside and outside the Russian Federation and sources close to them, including those in the Western Balkans region, continued to deny Russian responsibility for the crimes in Bucha.
Sputnik Srbija thus reported that the videos from Bucha were faked and the crimes “staged”, and that the BBC footage shows “victims resurrecting” and “standing up and moving their arms”. Others, on the other hand, uncritically conveyed the unsubstantiated claims of Russian officials that Ukraine was responsible for the killing of civilians in Bucha. Incorrect claims that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered the killing of civilians, or that he “agreed with the Nazis to kill people like in Bucha”, went viral on social networks.
In this analysis, we provide an overview of the propaganda narratives that tried to shift the responsibility for the crimes committed in the aggression against Ukraine to this country and build an image of Ukraine as a criminal and Nazi state – or even a “fake state” – which never had the right to exist.
Russia “liberates Ukraine”
From the beginning, Russian war propaganda consciously ignored the fact that the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish, portraying him as the leader of the “neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv”. This concept was already emphasized by Vladimir Putin when he declared the attack on Ukraine.
In a speech he gave on February 24, the day the invasion began, Putin set the framework for Russian propaganda narratives, including the one about “Nazism”. Calling the invasion a “special military operation” whose goal is the “denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine”, he also stated that he decided to attack Ukraine to “protect the people (Ukrainian Russians) who are subjected to the abuse and genocide being carried out for eight years by the Kyiv regime”. Putin even called on the Ukrainian army to lay down arms and join the Russian attackers against “the junta that is looting Ukraine and humiliating the Ukrainian people” and “neo-Nazis who have taken over power in Ukraine”. This part of his speech was featured on the website of the Russian Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In the months that followed, the motif of Ukraine as a “Nazi state”, which had a prominent place in Putin’s speech, became one of the central themes of propaganda narratives promoted by the official representatives of the Russian Federation in BiH and the region, with the support of pro-Russian media.
Thus, at the beginning of March 2022, Glas Srpske published an article penned by the ambassador of the Russian Federation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Igor Kalabuhov, who repeated the key claims from Putin’s speech. Kalabuhov called the Russian invasion of Ukraine “a special military operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine”, saying that Russia is not a threat to civilians in Ukraine, rather the authorities in Kyiv are, and “armed gangs that shoot at ordinary citizens without warning”, terrorizing their fellow citizens.
Similar claims were already spread on social networks by obscure “influencers” who assured their followers that the danger does not come from the destructive actions of the Russian army, but from “criminals armed by Zelensky”. Portraying Russia as the liberator of Ukraine was a frequent motif of early propaganda statements and contents, including claims that the Russian army is conducting a counter-offensive in Ukraine, while the Ukrainian army is laying down weapons and deflecting to the occupier’s side. This narrative, present in the first days of the invasion, when it was still thought that Ukraine would be quickly conquered, was proven wrong by the passing of time.
How did the story of Nazism spread in Ukraine?
By November 2022, Raskrinkavanje rated 225 social media posts and media reports that contained claims about Nazism and faking of crimes by Ukraine. Such claims were mostly spread on social networks, that is, on Twitter and Facebook. As far as media reporting is concerned, most of the media that published such content are based in Serbia, including Sputnik, Novosti, Srbija Danas, Informer, Krstarica, Alo and Tanjug. In BiH, such claims could be seen on the pages of Glas Srpske, RTRS and news website Prijedor24h. The largest number of posts, 164 of them, contained completely incorrect claims, i.e. fake news, while the rest contained various manipulations and conspiracy theories.
Claims about Ukraine as a Nazi state supported by the West were most often “proved” by spreading disinformation that tried to create the impression that Nazi symbols are omnipresent in the political and social life of Ukraine. Such was the photomontage of a swastika on the T-shirt held by the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, and a series of bizarre claims that Ukrainian refugees (in Great Britain and Croatia), captured Ukrainian soldiers or, on the other hand, the wives of Ukrainian soldiers, Ukrainian fans at the World Cup held in Qatar, and even contestants at the Eurovision Song Contest, publicly and openly wore Nazi symbols or used the Nazi salute.
Incorrect claims that a Ukrainian rocket hit the railway station in Kramatorsk also went viral. Along with them, there were comments suggesting that because of this, Zelensky “will have his own private Nuremberg”, which alluded to the Nuremberg Trials of former Nazi leaders for crimes committed during the Second World War.
Within this narrative, false claims have been shared suggesting that the US has been arming and supporting the Nazis in Ukraine for a long time, or that the sanctions against Russia were imposed by “former strike forces of the Third Reich”, who still adhere to Nazi ideology. In some cases, it was even claimed that Russia invaded Ukraine to prevent a world war planned by NATO.
Russia’s comparisons of present-day Ukraine and Nazi Germany have provoked special condemnations from individuals and groups engaged in the preservation of memory of the Holocaust and the study of genocide, Nazism and World War II. More than 140 scientists working in these fields condemned Putin’s words in a joint statement, claiming that the Russian authorities are misusing history and trying to portray Ukraine as a Nazi and fascist country to justify aggression against it.
Moreover, this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day was marked for the first time without the presence of a Russian delegation in the former Auschwitz concentration camp, which was liberated by the Soviet army. As the director of the Auschwitz Museum said, for the first time representatives of Russia were not invited to the commemoration of the anniversary of the death camp liberation because Russia, destroying Mariupol and Donetsk, showed “the same sick megalomania” that led the Nazis when they built Auschwitz. Russian propaganda, on the other hand, is not abandoning the story that Russia is “fighting Nazism” in Ukraine – moreover, this narrative is becoming radicalized still. Just one day after the anniversary of Auschwitz, Sputnik Srbija quoted a Crimean deputy in the Russian Duma, who said that the military aid sent by Western countries to Ukraine represents the realization of the “Nazi program of genocide against the Slavic people”.
Where does this narrative come from and what is its purpose?
The history of Ukrainian-Russian relations is long and complicated. Ukraine first gained its independence from Russia in the modern times in 1917, but lost it in 1922, when it was integrated into the Soviet Union (USSR). The USSR carried out an intensive campaign of “Russification” in Ukraine, with one of the most difficult consequences of Soviet policies in Ukraine being the so-called Great Famine (1932–1933), also known as Holodomor, which took millions of Ukrainian lives and was recently recognized as genocide in a European Parliament resolution. Holodomor was caused by Stalin’s decisions on the collectivization of agricultural production, and then by depriving Ukrainian peasants of food and the possibility to produce or obtain it.
When the German invasion of the Soviet Union began in June 1941, some Ukrainians saw it as an opportunity to leave the USSR. In 1941, mass murders of Jews began, which would continue until 1944, famine was widespread, and more than 2.2 million Ukrainians were taken to forced labour in Germany. A resistance movement against the Nazis was being organized, including secret cells of the Communist Party in eastern and central Ukraine and the Soviet partisan movement in the north. On the other hand, in 1942, the formation of nationalist units began, which became known as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which fought both the Germans and the Soviet partisans.
According to Djuro Vidmarovic, historian and former ambassador of Croatia to Ukraine, during the Second World War, Ukraine was mostly part of the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent part of Poland, and did not have its own “Nazi state”, although some fighters for Ukraine’s independence temporarily sided with the Nazis during the German occupation. It soon became clear that Nazi Germany did not intend to “liberate” Ukraine or support its collaborators. They certainly existed – the most famous is probably nationalist Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. At the beginning of the war, he collaborated with the Nazis, who, in turn, soon arrested him for trying to establish an independent Ukraine. Bandera is one of the figures used extensively to portray Ukraine as a Nazi state. In Ukraine, certain circles still condemn him as a Nazi collaborator, while others celebrate him as a fighter for independence – for example, in 2010, the then President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, posthumously awarded him the “Hero of Ukraine” award, which caused fierce reactions both inside and outside the country.
Ukrainian history from the period of World War II is, therefore, complex – and in that respect, it does not differ too much from most of the countries that were under Nazi occupation, in which collaborationist and resistance movements also developed. However, there was no Nazi “puppet state” in Ukraine, just as the modern-day presence of radical right-wing groups – which is in no way specific to Ukraine – does not represent the political “mainstream” in this country.
The main argument in this narrative is the activity and status of the Ukrainian extreme right-wing military unit Azov, whose members have been linked to war crimes. In the narrative about Ukraine as a “Nazi state”, the actions of Azov are presented as an expression of the official policy of the Ukrainian authorities, while ignoring the fact that it was the Russian annexation of Crimea and the war that has been going on in the eastern parts of this country since 2014 that contributed to the militarization of part of Ukrainian society. It was then that Azov was formed as a volunteer unit that participated in the battles in those territories, and since then it has been part of the National Guard of Ukraine.
However, Nazism or fascism is not the “official” ideology of the Ukrainian state. The extreme right in Ukraine, as well as in most European countries, does not have significant influence in the Parliament and the Government. The radical right-wing political coalition won only 2% of the vote in the 2019 Ukrainian elections, which shows that this ideology does not have widespread support among the electorate. In Ukraine, there has never been any “takeover of power by neo-Nazis”, which Vladimir Putin talked about. Moreover, research shows that anti-Semitism is significantly less prevalent in Ukraine than in Russia.
Jeffrey Veidlinger, professor of history and Jewish studies at the American University of Michigan, said in an interview with the New York Times that the Russian understanding of Nazism is much more characterized by the idea of Nazi Germany as the antithesis to the Soviet Union than by the fact that the Nazi ideology was based on the persecution of Jews.
“That’s why they can call a state that has a Jewish president a Nazi state and it doesn’t seem all that discordant to them,” he said.
Stories about the “denazification” of Ukraine are, therefore, an clever way to gain support from the Russian public for an attack on Ukraine because, as Veidlinger notes, they are rooted in a part of Russian history that is very significant for this country: “The war against Nazism is the key moment of the 20th century for Russia. What they are doing now is in a way a continuation of that great moment of national unity from the Second World War”.
Historian Oleksa Drachewych also points out that the story of the “denazification” of Ukraine deliberately relies on “Russian fascination with the Second World War”, that is, on the victory of the USSR over Nazism as one of the greatest triumphs in Russian history.
Đuro Vidmarović also believes that the story about Ukrainian “Nazism” was primarily intended to secure the support of the Russian public for the attack on Ukraine: “The advance of the troops was preceded by an intensive propaganda offensive aimed primarily at the public at home. All claims made against the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian state were meant to justify the occupation of that country and the extermination of those Ukrainians who would not accept the occupation. One of the points of Russian anti-Ukrainian propaganda was the claim that Ukrainians are Nazis, and Ukraine is a Nazi state, which is why the Russian Federation would have the right to intervene and carry out “denazification” in Ukraine”.
The data collected by the analytics company Semantic Visions and presented in a New York Times article show that the association of Ukraine with Nazism has significantly intensified in the Russian public space since the beginning of the invasion. The research covered a huge sample of almost eight million articles about Ukraine published in Russian, with about 8,000 websites from Russia. The term “Nazism” appeared in these sources in less than 250 articles a week until February 24 last year, and on the day the invasion of Ukraine began, it appeared in more than 2,000 articles. Since then, the frequency of using this term in connection with Ukraine has remained significantly higher than ever before, although stories about “Ukrainian Nazism” have been present since 2014 when they served as a justification for supporting separatist “republics” and the annexation of Crimea.
Ukraine as a “criminal” and a state that does not exist
The use of propaganda to discredit a rival in armed conflict is part of what is called hybrid or special warfare. Accusing the other party of one’s own crimes is a classic means of war propaganda, and narratives in which the attacked party is portrayed as criminal are not specific only to the war in Ukraine. In the digital age, with the advent of online media, and especially social networks, the output and dissemination of such content is faster than ever.
Accusations against Ukraine often contain false claims that the Ukrainian army is responsible for wrongdoings committed by Russian forces. In addition to the already mentioned attempt to blame Ukraine for the crimes in Bucha, inaccurate claims were also spread in the BCS language region that the Ukrainian army laid mines in the city of Mariupol and held civilians there as hostages, not allowing them to leave the city, and even that the Ukrainian army “changes into Russian uniforms and kills civilians”. In addition to the accusations of committing crimes, this narrative also includes allegations of other types of actions by the Ukrainian authorities against their own citizens, such as that they ordered the disconnection of the mobile network in the Kherson region.
In his February 24 speech, Putin denied that Ukraine ever had “real statehood”, presenting the state as a temporary formation and even some kind of “occupying” government that terrorizes its own people. This motif was also supported by conspiracy theorists and pro-Russian media in the BCS language region. Thus, for example, claims were spread that Ukraine never submitted a request for border registration and that because of this it is formally not a state, but a province, as well as the bizarre story that it handed over gold and foreign currency reserves to Poland and thus “lost another component of statehood”.
In addition to accusations of conducting actions against its own people, in several instances, the Ukrainian army was accused of attacks on foreign citizens or missions of international organizations in the country. Fake news that Ukrainian forces captured vehicles of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Ukraine (OSCE) or that they occupied the UN office in Kramatorsk were quickly denied by both organizations.
When not accusing Ukraine of war crimes committed by its own forces, Russia mostly denied them, attributing them to “Western propaganda”. In September 2022, a few days after the discovery of a mass grave in Izyum, conspiracy theorists began sharing a video of an environmental protest held in Vienna with false claims that the “Western propaganda” presented it as a report on mass graves (the same video was previously used as evidence of “faking the Covid-19 pandemic”, with equally incorrect claims that the Western media presented it as a report on the victims of the pandemic).
In a number of similar pieces of disinformation, Western media have been falsely accused of falsifying or inventing evidence of crimes in Ukraine by presenting movie scenes or old footage of accidents as scenes from the war in Ukraine. None of that happened.
Since the beginning of the war, the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) has been monitoring disinformation about the Ukrainian war spreading in the European Union, using data from fact-checking newsrooms working in the EU. From the periodic reports published by EDMO, it can be seen that the most represented campaign is the discreditation of Ukraine (44% of observed narratives, including accusations of Nazism and falsification of crimes). This is followed by narratives targeting NATO and foreign countries that support Ukraine (15 percent), the reputation of Volodymyr Zelensky (12 percent), the Western media (12 percent) and Ukrainian refugees (7 percent).
The narratives in which various baseless accusations are made against Ukraine and Ukrainians are still active today, a year after the beginning of the invasion. Sputnik Srbija, the Serbian edition of the Russian state media, played a significant role in the creation and dissemination of media content tailored to the Russian policy in the BCS (Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian) language area. Misinformative and manipulative reports about the war in Ukraine from this news website were shared by numerous pro-Russian media in Serbia and Bosnia’s Republika Srpska – including public services and news agencies. However, they also appeared in the media that are not ideologically close to Sputnik, thanks to the trend of so-called copy/paste journalism, or media content routinely republished without any verification, with a sole reason – to get as many visits to the website as possible. Social networks also played a significant role in the spread of Russian narratives against Ukraine, where some especially “successful” pieces of disinformation managed to get thousands of interactions.
(Elma Murić, Alena Beširević and Tijana Cvjetićanin, Raskrinkavanje.ba)
