On 24 February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the start of a “special military operation” in Ukraine. Putin claimed the official aim of the war would be the “demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine”. As his spokesman Dmitri Peskov explained the same day, this means that “ideally, Ukraine should be liberated, cleansed of Nazis, pro-Nazi people, and ideology”.
Anastasia Spartak is a journalist and antifascist activist from Russia.
Russian media refer to Russian soldiers as antifascists and Ukrainians as Nazis, drawing parallels with the events on the Eastern Front of the Second World War (1941–1945), known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. “As in 1945, victory will be ours”, Putin wrote on 9 May 2022. Russian soldiers in Ukraine use Soviet symbols. They wear patches with the hammer and sickle and place red flags on tanks, rebuild destroyed Lenin monuments in occupied Ukrainian cities and place the Victory Banner — a copy of the one placed on the Reichstag on 1 May 1945 — on administrative buildings in Ukraine to announce the seizure of territory.
This text explains how Russia uses elements of antifascism to justify its war against Ukraine. In doing so, it examines the specific usage of the words “Nazis” and “fascists” in Russia, what objective circumstances have led Putin and the ruling class to misuse “antifascism” to consolidate power and legitimize foreign policy. The Russian Federation adopted antifascism from the USSR and cynically appropriated it, just as Russian oligarchs appropriated Soviet assets. Russia presents itself as a fighter against fascism, and Victory Day, celebrated in Russia on 9 May, has become the main public holiday in the country. After Putin came to power, youth antifascist youth organizations emerged in the country, which paradoxically existed on an equal footing with Kremlin-controlled far-right groups. On the international stage at the UN, Russia fights against the glorification of Nazism, while being friends with far-right parties in Europe.
This text is not about Ukraine at all and does not aim to whitewash Ukrainian nationalism. The purpose of this text is to deconstruct Russian propaganda in order to refute the ideological justification for the war against Ukraine.