It’s an attempt to apply the old Soviet and now Putinesque trope of Russia vs. From there follows the Kremlin propaganda line that Ukrainians are repressing Russians and Russian speakers, committing atrocities and genocide against them, and that Russia needs to “liberate” the victims of this supposed Ukrainian nationalism. The Kremlin propaganda machine cherry-picks Ukrainian history to amplify its nationalist side - which has at times been anti-Polish and antisemitic - conflate it with the whole of the country’s history, and then claim that Ukraine’s pro-European governments channel this narrative. Russian troops are trying to achieve that goal as I write. Today, in practice, the term means the replacement (probably killing or arresting) of Ukraine’s pro-Western, democratically elected leaders with a Kremlin puppet. But when the Soviet Army rolled into Eastern Europe in 1944-45, liberation from Nazism was accompanied by imposition of Communist rule, usually by violence, and oppression that lasted decades. Putin is using it to justify his war against his neighbor, evoking the memory of the Soviet Union’s defense against Nazi Germany - one of the few episodes in the past 100 years in which Russia held anything close to the moral high ground. “Denazification” is a coded historical term, familiar to Ukrainians, other Eastern Europeans and certainly to Putin’s domestic audience. The BND identified another Rusich member, Alexander M., as a military correspondent at Russia’s Channel One state broadcaster, according to Der Spiegel.Daniel Fried is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council.Īs Russian President Vladimir Putin prepared to invade Ukraine, he claimed to be doing so to achieve “ demilitarization and denazification” of the neighboring nation. Both were pictured in the BND report cited by Der Spiegel with a swastika flag and a Hitler salute. Milchakov and Rusich co-founder Yan Petrovsky had met at a Russian Imperial Movement paramilitary training program, according to The Times. Rusich founder Alexei Milchakov was wounded as soon as the group entered Ukraine. Gariyev, his deputy and two other right-wing extremists are believed to have been wounded in the fighting, BND said in the report cited by Der Spiegel. Britain’s The Times located Rusich fighters crossing into eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region near the Russian border in early April. The Russian Imperial Movement’s flag was seen in Ukraine by the Guardian in Mid-March Meanwhile. Rusich is believed to have become involved no later than early April. The Russian Imperial Legion announced its decision to enter combat operations in Ukraine shortly after its leader Denis Gariyev called on supporters to “be patient” in early March, the report states. “Whether this decision was made at the request of or in consultation with the Russian leadership” is unclear, the BND analysis writes. The Russian Imperial Legion is a paramilitary arm of the ultranationalist Russian Imperial Movement, which the United States designated as a terrorist organization in 2020. 24 with the stated aim of “denazifying and demilitarizing” its pro-Western neighbor, before shifting its focus toward eastern Ukraine for the campaign's second phase in late March. Several reports have linked Rusich with Wagner, a shadowy, Kremlin-linked private military company. Their involvement “makes the ostensible reason for war, the so-called ‘denazification’ of Ukraine, absurd,” BND is quoted as saying.īoth groups are thought to have participated in the war between Moscow-backed, pro-Russian separatists and Kyiv that broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The document shared with German ministries by the BND intelligence service does not provide the exact number of far-right fighters, but identifies them as the Russian Imperial Legion and Rusich groups. At least two neo-Nazi groups are fighting for Russian forces in Ukraine, throwing into question Moscow’s claims of “denazifying” its neighbor, German weekly Der Spiegel reported Sunday, citing a confidential intelligence report.
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