DISINFO: Nazi West wants to destroy Russian identity and history
SUMMARY
The conflict with the West in Ukraine imposed on Russia fits into the broader pattern of our historical relations with the West. It contains everything we have had to endure: direct aggression - now in hybrid form - and Nazism in its pure, man-eating form. There is also the struggle against Orthodoxy, which dates back to the first half of the 13th century. There has been no concealment of the desire to destroy our identity and our history through the 'cancellation' of Russian culture and the Russian language - of everything Russian.
RESPONSE
This message promotes several recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives, including the false claim that the EU is “rehabilitating Nazism”, and that Europe is gripped by systemic Russophobia. It also falsely equates current political support for Ukraine with historical Nazism.
Pro-Kremlin outlets repeatedly talk about the “revival” of Nazism in the West. Labelling Russia’s adversaries as Nazis is a widespread pro-Kremlin disinformation technique, and has been used by Russia to justify the invasion of Ukraine by portraying it as a “denazification operation”. Russia spent years preparing the information battleground before its kinetic attack, with “Nazi Ukraine” being one of its most prominent disinformation tropes.
“Threatened values” is one of the most common narratives used by pro-Kremlin outlets. The narrative is adapted to a wide range of topics, including Russian identity. This disinformation piece also implies that there is a cancel-culture trend towards Russian culture, history and language. This unsubstantiated claim is made in the context of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine in an attempt to legitimise Moscow's unprovoked aggression.
Pro-Kremlin disinformation machine uses same established narratives, tested in different parts of the world. Discrimination against the Russian language and Russians, in Kazakhstan,Ukraine, Moldova or in the Baltics, and elsewhere, is a classic disinformation narrative, widely recorded on the EUvsDisinfo database.
See similar cases about Russian language under attack such as Kazakhstan is a shrinking space for the Russian language; Moldova: Maia Sandu is attempting to forcibly "Romanize" almost all spheres of life and Russian language is banned in Ukrainian regions controlled by the Kyiv junta; Nationalists outlawed the Russian language in Ukraine.