Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday peddled accusations of Nazi elements within Ukraine to justify the attack on his western neighbor, a move that experts slammed as slanderous and false.
In announcing he had launched Russian forces against key Ukrainian military and logistics posts, Putin said he's striving for "the demilitarization and denazification of" the sovereign democracy in Kyiv.
Putin has long sought to falsely paint Ukraine as a Nazi hotbed, which is a particularly jarring accusation given that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and lost three family members in the Holocaust.
Claiming to fight the Nazis is "really code for replacing the Ukrainian government, which is especially ironic given that the Ukrainian president is Jewish," said Andrij Dobriansky of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, an ethnic advocacy group based in New York City.
Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, fought to contain his anger over the Nazi narrative pushed by Putin.
"He's talking about denazification. There are no Nazis in Ukraine," McFaul said Thursday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"The leader of Ukraine is not a Nazi, he's a democratically elected leader," McFaul said. "He's Jewish. He is not a Nazi. I'm sorry I'm so emotional. But we've to get over the fact that we're going to deal with this guy on some realpolitik, cost-benefit analysis."
Feb. 24,...
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