‘For a World Without Nazism’
Russian President Vladimir Putin held a pro-war rally on Friday, the anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. He spoke in a stadium filled with cheering and flag-waving Russians in front of signs that said “For a world without Nazism” and “For Russia,” in an apparent reference to his military campaign objectives of “demilitarization and de-Nazification” of Ukraine.
Putin justified what he called a “special military operation” in Ukraine by talking about the separatist conflict in Donbas, claiming that what went on there was “genocide” and that stopping that was the aim of the military action. He vowed that Russia would “absolutely” accomplish all of its plans in Ukraine.
It’s unclear how much support among Russians there is for Putin’s “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and topple the government in Kyiv, whom he calls “neo-Nazis.”
Polling firm Active Group carried out a phone survey on a sample of 1,557 people in Russia between March 11–14, with one of the questions asked, “should the Russian Federation militarily force other countries to abandon their support for the Nazis in Ukraine?”
The poll found that 40.6 percent of respondents said they support Russian military action in other countries over their support for Ukraine amid the current conflict, 46 percent said they weren’t sure, while 13.4 percent said no.
A long list of historians have denounced Putin’s claims of “de-Nazifying” Ukraine, calling it a “gross mischaracterization” while labeling his rhetoric as “factually wrong, morally repugnant, and deeply offensive to the memory of millions of victims of Nazism and those who courageously fought against it, including Russian and Ukrainian soldiers of the Red Army.”
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