Vladimir Putin’s regime has banned the Russian media from referring to the invasion of Ukraine as a “war”. Instead, they have to frame it as “an operation to liberate Ukraine from neo-Nazis.”
The state-run RIA news agency has published a lurid blurb that Russia, “for the second time in its history, will shoulder the burden of freeing Ukraine from Nazism.” Readers are told that “making slight cosmetic corrections to the swastika with high-quality makeup” was “the main method of building the concept of the state in Ukraine.” Now Russia is conducting a “denazification” operation “in the interest of all of Europe, even if Europe is not aware of it.”
This is worth dissecting, as propaganda plays an important role in sustaining Putin’s dictatorship, especially in times of crisis. And without Putin’s dictatorship there would certainly be no war in Ukraine. The more difference there is between expectation and reality in the Russian military campaign, the more the regime will depend on propaganda.
Over the years, Putin has told the Russian people many contradictory things about Russia and Ukraine. In his first two terms as president (2000-2008), he had ambitions to modernize Russia and deepen its ties with the West.
But once he tasted the power, he began to think mainly about how to stay in it. Modernization gave way to the brutality of a police state, and now, thinking of its place in history, it has come to the conclusion that Russia cannot be a world power without Ukraine. And yet, when he assumed his current term, Ukraine was still pro-Russian and the Kremlin still had significant influence over it. It was because of his annexation of Crimea and the appropriation of 7% of the Ukrainian territory in 2014 that caused the feelings and opinions of the Ukrainians to change.
Between failing to modernize Russia and alienating Ukrainians, Putin has made several unforced mistakes that future generations of Russians will not forgive him for. Think that, in his early days, Putin was considering bringing Russia closer to the European Union and even NATO. He was not in his head to deny Ukraine sovereignty. When asked in May 2002 about Ukraine’s declaration of its willingness to join NATO, he replied:
“On NATO enlargement, our position is well known. It has not changed, but that does not mean that Ukraine should remain on the sidelines of processes that aim to strengthen peace and security in Europe and the planet in general. Ukraine is a sovereign state and has the right to independently choose the path to ensure its own security.”
But when Ukrainians took to the streets in the 2004 Orange Revolution to protest corruption and electoral fraud, Putin freaked out. What would happen if the Russians decided to do the same thing? By 2008, Putin had adopted a new stance. In a speech at the Nato-Russia Council meeting – held in Bucharest – he gave a sample of the logic that led him to wage this war of aggression against Ukraine.
If Western governments had taken him seriously, they would not have wasted the last three months trying to figure out his intentions, and would probably have supplied Ukraine with more arms and money. Putin clearly signaled his intentions:
“The south of Ukraine is completely inhabited by Russians. Who can tell us that we have no interests there?… In Ukraine, in general, a third of the population are ethnic Russians. Of the 45 million, according to the official census, 17 million are Russian. There are regions inhabited only by Russians, such as Crimea: 90% Russians. In its present form, Ukraine has received territory from Poland – after the Second World War – from Czechoslovakia, from Romania. It received huge territories from Russia in the east and south of the country. It is a complicated state creation. And if you add to that the problem of NATO and others, they can put the question of the State in total suspense”.
The two census claims were false: 17 million is merely the number of Ukrainians who declared Russian as their first language, and ethnic Russians made up no more than 60% of Crimea’s population at the time. But the point is that Putin pointed out 14 years ago that he would use claims of historical revisionism about Russian minorities outside the country’s borders as a pretext to interfere in internal affairs. In doing so, he was following in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler, who, six months before invading Poland, used the minority German populations across the border as a pretext to destroy democratic Czechoslovakia.
Moreover, like Nazi Germany, Putin is mired in a paranoia of betrayal. With echoes of the German nationalists of the 1920s and 1930s, he cannot accept the fact that the Soviet Union fell without losing the battle against the West. The only explanation is that it must have been betrayed by the elites, who finished off a great nation from within.
Seemingly unaware of these historical parallels, Putin sees Nazis in action everywhere except at home. And yet he routinely enlists the help of neo-Nazis like Dmitry Utkin, a mercenary for the Wagner Group, a private army financed by oligarchs close to the Krem-lin who has Waffen-SS tattoos on his neck and chest.
As with Nazi Germany, the Kremlin’s provocations seem extraordinarily inept. Russia is ostentatiously and brutally violating international law with the intention of humiliating Ukraine and frightening a dissolute West.
That is why the Kremlin’s propaganda has gone so far as to describe the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, as a drug addict and a neo-Nazi, despite the fact that he is a Jew whose grandfather fought against the Nazis in World War II and lost several relatives in the Holocaust.
Until recently, Russian propaganda has worked not only in Russia but in the West. Apart from American Republicans who have openly sided with Putin, many Germans have failed to see that the Soviet victims of Nazism were not all Russian. In fact, Nazism claimed more Ukrainian victims, and a Ukrainian soldier was the first to open the gates of Auschwitz.
Whatever happens in Ukraine, Moscow has already lost the sympathy of the world. All over the planet, the Ukrainian people and their leaders are seen as heroes. And as more body bags arrive in Russia or are burned in mobile crematoria, even Putin’s supporters may begin to doubt his leadership.
SLAWOMIR SIERAKOWSKI
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