The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
When Russian soldiers invaded Lubyanka, a village near the ravaged Kyiv suburb of Bucha, the Russians forced all the men to assemble in a central square. Then the invaders demanded that the Nazis step forward.
“The men laughed,” I was told by Iryna Rayko, a Ukrainian-American whose sister in Lubyanka recently informed her by phone of the details. “They said, ‘There are no Nazis here, we are just Ukrainians who love our country.’ ”
Luckily none of these men were murdered in the square in February. But the Russian military’s fixation on rooting out “Nazis” reflects the Big Lie Vladimir Putin tells his people to justify the Ukraine war. He insists that Ukraine is led by Nazis — backed by the United States and NATO — and that the country is riddled with Nazi sympathizers.
Putin’s Big Lie provides the Russian military with justification for more war crimes against civilians. It justifies the Russian president’s goal of bringing Ukraine back under control of Greater Russia. It also allows him to blame Russian military crimes on Ukrainian “Nazis” who kill their own people.
So Putin will pay no heed to Western charges of war crimes or genocide, and Russians won’t press him to do so. There is no hope of a negotiated end to the war unless he and the Russian public can be forced to face the truth.
What makes Putin’s Nazi trope so bizarre is that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is Jewish (as is his prime minister) and lost members of his family in the Holocaust. The far right in Ukraine has only one parliamentary seat, and commands only a tiny fraction of the support that the far right garners in Germany or France — or in Russia.
Yet the Kremlin constantly blames the Russian military’s war crimes — which the world is watching live — on one battalion in the Ukrainian army composed of nationalist ideologues.
So far, a majority of Russians are buying Putin’s lies. It’s typical to hear stories like this one, from Yevhen, who serves in the Ukrainian military. He told me via WhatsApp: “My father’s brother who lives in Russia called him and said, ‘We are saving you from Nazi barbarians.’ My father replied, ‘You are crazy. Come here and I will show you who are Nazis.’ ” But the hard facts didn’t change the Russian relative’s mind.
It may seem unimaginable to Americans that this Nazi trope can brainwash much of the Russian public in the age of the internet. Yet most Russians still get their news from state-controlled TV and radio, on which Putin and state-controlled media pundits constantly push the Ukraine-Nazi message.
Of course, Americans shouldn’t be too surprised that Putin has been able to hoodwink tens of millions of Russians who can’t access real news. We live in a country with open access to information, yet about one-third of the population has been brainwashed by Donald Trump’s Big Lie that he won the election.
Putin’s Big Lie is proof that, even in the internet age, an autocrat can hypnotize his country with propaganda that reaches Hitlerian levels.
Putin can resist sanctions by convincing his public of the need to sacrifice in order to defeat the new Nazis. He will only back down if forced by military defeat on the field.
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