DISINFO: Ukrainian authorities allowed Nazis' demostrations
SUMMARY
Nationalists in Kiev celebrated the 77th anniversary of the creation of a Nazi Waffen SS battalion made up of Ukrainian volunteers. The Ukrainian authorities facilitated this, with the local police seeming to have closed the road to allow the demonstrations to continue.
RESPONSE
Recurring disinformation narrative about the alleged widespread influence of Nazism in Ukraine. However, as far as the described demonstration is concerned, the Ukrainian authorities issued specific orders and the symbols used were not related with Nazism.
The myth of Nazi-ruled Ukraine has been a cornerstone of Russian disinformation about the country since the very beginning of the 2013-14 Euromaidan protests, when it was used to discredit the pro-European popular uprising in Kyiv and, subsequently, the broader pro-Western shift in Ukraine's foreign policy. Far-right groups enjoyed a very limited presence during the Euromaidan itself and had poor results in the 2014 presidential and parliamentary elections. In the 2019 election, far-right candidates scored very low (1-2%) and fell short of the 5% minimum guaranteeing entry into parliament.
The Nazi and Communist ideologies were banned by a Ukrainian law in 2015.
Read similar cases claiming that Fascism conquered most of Ukraine, that Ukraine is a neo-Nazi state and that pro-Western civil society in Ukraine is a fascist fifth column; and that Europe supports the revival of fascism.