Oleg Morozov, a member of the Russian parliament and an ally of President Vladimir Putin’s, made what sounded much like a threat in May 2022. Poland should be “in first place in the queue for denazification after Ukraine,” he said.
Just days earlier, pro-Putin Moscow city assembly member, Sergey Savostyanov, asserted that after Ukraine, Russia needs to drive alleged Nazis from power in six more countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Moldova and Kazakhstan.
Just a few months following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which was made under the false pretense of denazifying the government of that country, such claims might send chills down the spines of the people in those countries as well as of many keen observers of the region.
It could be argued that such claims of denazification “might be dismissed as the hyperbolic expression of one individual in the overheated atmosphere of Russia today,” as scholar and former diplomat Paul Goble recently described it. Yet it’s evident that for over a decade, Russia has used lies and disinformation, including many references to denazifiying Ukraine, to build a case specifically for the Ukraine invasion.
And unsupported claims of denazification have been an excuse for Russian international aggression since World War II.
Putin and his allies have attempted to expand the meaning of “Nazism” to essentially render it meaningless – but still useful to them. Anyone who opposes Putin’s government can be labeled a Nazi, representing...
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