Vladimir Putin announces the start of his campaign to ‘demilitarise’ and ‘de-Nazify’ Ukraine, moments before a full-scale invasion.
By Anastasia O’Reilly, Fourth Year Religion and Theology
On 24th of February 2022, the result of months of military build-up on the Ukrainian border was finally realised. The Russian Federation launched a full-scale invasion into Ukraine, marking a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that began in 2014 with Russia’s annexation of Crimea. This time Russia invaded on several fronts, causing Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to enact martial law.
Prior to the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin employed a rhetoric that outraged international leaders. He said that Russia had a duty to “demilitarise” and “de-Nazify” Ukraine. By re-framing the narrative surrounding the invasion, Putin attempted to set a justifiable pretext for the advancement of Russian troops into Ukrainian territory. Putin claimed that the Kyiv regime had committed genocide and subjected its population to humiliation for years. “To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation" said Putin according to an English translation from the Russian Mission in Geneva.
Other officials also utilised this language, with a Russian representative stating it was undergoing “a special military operation against nationalists to protect the people of Donbass, ensure denazification and demilitarisation", and Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs stated that “war crimes in Ukraine” were prompted by “Neo-Nazism and Russophobia”.
This rhetoric and re-framing of history was condemned by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC who released a statement that Russia was misappropriating Holocaust history. They expressed horror that Russia would claim that Ukraine, should need to be ‘denazified’ and that it was committing ‘genocide’. Russia additionally claimed that Ukraine was “Russiophobic”, and that ethnic Russian populations situated in Ukraine needed to be liberated. The duty to protect these approximately eight million people was the pretext of the 2014 invasion. Yet, these accusations of genocide are particularly poignant as President Zelenskyy was born into a Ukrainian Jewish family and has family who died in the Holocaust.
The supposed pretext of Russia’s invasion alludes back to when Ukraine was under Nazi occupation during WWII. Germany invaded the USSR on June 22nd, 1941, and by November had occupied virtually all of Ukraine. Some Ukrainians had struggled for independence from Soviet control, leading to some Ukrainians viewing the Germans as their liberator. Members of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) accompanied the Nazis upon entry in Lviv and declared the restoration of Ukrainian statehood. However, this vision quickly deteriorated as organisers of this provisional state administration were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The Nazis distributed parts of Ukraine to surrounding countries and established the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Soon after, mass killings of Jews began, Ukrainians were forced into labour, and cultural activities repressed. After defeating the Germans at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, the Soviets advanced westward, eventually bringing Ukraine back under its control in 1944. Therefore, Putin’s distorted claims refer to the Soviet Union’s fighting of fascism.
Additionally, Ukraine was a key part of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, having many natural resources and defence industries. But in December 1991, when the Soviet Union went into dissolution, Ukraine voted for independence and Leonid Kravchuk was elected president. From there, Ukraine acceded to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapon state, joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace and ratified a new constitution. Ukraine was falling into the Western orbit and intensifying the war demonstrated Russia’s broader struggle against Western powers, who Putin viewed as wanting to destroy Russia.
More generally, the term ‘Nazi’ has become synonymous with ‘absolute evil’ and is seen by some scholars as part of an ongoing attempt to delegitimise Ukraine. During the Soviet Union pro-Western Ukrainians were labelled ‘Banderites’ and have continued to use distorting language when Ukraine attempts to establish a democratic society.
There are a multitude of reasons why Russia wants, and believes it has a right to, Ukraine. As well as sharing a long cultural, ethnic, and linguistic history, Ukraine is key to Russia’s identity and perception of itself in the world. The two countries have familial ties spanning back centuries. Kyiv is occasionally called “the mother of Russian cites”, and it was here that Christianity was introduced to the Slavic people from the Byzantine Empire. Christianity then served as the cornerstone for Kievan Rus, the early Slavic state from which the modern peoples of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus trace their heritage. There is also a large ethnically Russian diaspora living in Ukraine, mainly the Eastern and Southern regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv and Crimea. Researcher Olga Lautman has suggested that Putin has “nothing to show” for his last two decades in office, and regaining the Soviet Union’s former territories would bolster Russia’s superpower image.
Ultimately, Putin’s campaign to ‘demilitarise’ and ‘de-Nazify’ Ukraine has long been a part of Russia’s attempts to delegitimise Ukraine and make Western powers less sympathetic of the Kyiv regime and its people. The 2022 invasion marked a tragic escalation of a long-standing conflict with deep cultural, geopolitical, and historical roots. This has been the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II and the use of distorted rhetoric shines a light on how Russia sees itself in the global order, and what future course its actions might take.