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Russia defended itself against the invasion of collective Europe in World War II and can do it again now, in the context of the war in Ukraine, according to pro-Kremlin propaganda.
Disinformation: Russia defeated collective Europe in 1945 and can do it again now, on the territory of Ukraine
NEWS: European states were a useful part of the Third Reich, participating in the looting of our country and the killing of civilians […] On May 8, 1945, collective Europe was defeated by historical Russia. The subsequent denazification, reinforced by the presence of a huge Soviet military contingent, succeeded in raising generations of citizens and politicians who became aware of their historical guilt. It was indeed a great achievement. The descendants of these people perfectly understand what is happening and categorically do not want to fight with Russia.
After the withdrawal of the Soviet army and the dismantling of the USSR, the vaccine against Russophobia no longer helps […]. Washington is simply encouraging European revanchism and historical hatred of Russia.
May 8 should be for Europe a day of repentance towards Russia, a day of awareness of the historical mistakes it made. But no! They want to fight us again. Ukrainians are our brothers, we still have to live with them, but the attitude towards the French, Germans and Poles will be completely different. Military responses on their territory are also possible.
[…] Note to Hitler's heirs: we do not and never have had feelings towards foreign interventionists. May 8 is a good date to refresh your historical memory.
NARRATIVES: 1. World War II was Europe’s conflict against Russia. 2. Russia has the right to take revenge on the states that are not grateful to it for their "liberation" from Nazism and are now supporting Ukraine. 3. The US encourages Russophobia and European revanchism.
SOCIAL BACKGROUND/ ETHOS: Victory over Nazi Germany Day is an important holiday in Russia, inherited from the Soviet Union and marked on May 9. According to Russian historiography, it was only thanks to the troops of the Red Army that the capitulation of the Nazi regime and the "liberation" of some European states from foreign occupation was possible.
Russian historiography, however, ignores the role of the USSR in triggering the world conflagration and the invasion of several European countries that resulted from the non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. Also glossed over are the massive support given to the Soviet Union by the United States and the war effort by numerous other states against Nazi Germany (including the destruction of the German war industry by bombing and the opening of new fronts in Europe, in Italy and France, which forced Germany to allocate significant resources in the West). The occupation of Eastern European states against their will and the imposition of oppressive communist regimes that would last half a century and prevent those states from developing to a level close to that of the West are also brushed aside.
In the context of the war in Ukraine, Russian propaganda presents the military events in the neighboring state as a continuation of the second world conflagration, caused by the US's encouragement of a European "revanchism" and an out-of-control Russophobia. According to this false narrative, just as Russia defeated the collective West in 1945, Moscow will succeed in doing so in the future, because the Russian army cannot be defeated.
PURPOSE: To justify Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine; to strengthen the image of the West / Europe as an external enemy of Moscow.
FACT: On May 8, 1945, Adolf Hitler's Reich capitulated to a coalition of 54 states.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: WWII was not a Western/European war against Russia. On the contrary, the USSR was as guilty as Nazi Germany of starting the war following the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Two weeks after Nazi Germany invaded Poland, on September 1, 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Nazi Adolf Hitler divided Poland and the Baltic countries through a secret protocol. Other acts of seizing followed, including the annexation of Bessarabia and Bucovina from Romania, which is not much talked about in the Russian press, nor in the Ukrainian one. A 2019 European Parliament resolution points out that the Second World War, the most devastating war in European history, broke out as an immediate result of the notorious Nazi-Soviet non-aggression and cooperation pact of August 23, 1939, also known as The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, by which two totalitarian regimes that shared imperial goals divided Europe into spheres of influence. Russian propaganda does not even mention the German-Soviet military parade in Brest-Litovsk on September 22, 1939, when the two aggressors celebrated the conquest of an independent state. So, World War II was not one started by the West against Russia, but one designed by two totalitarian states (Germany and the USSR) against the free world.
Russia has no right to take revenge on European states that are not "grateful for their liberation". In reality, what happened in 1945 was a Soviet occupation. The Soviet troops installed pro-Moscow communist governments in eastern and central Europe, forever annexing territories of sovereign nations. There is no connection between the history of the Second World War and the decision of some Western states to support Ukraine in the context of the Russian invasion of 2022. According to international law and the UN Charter, Kyiv has an inherent right to self-defense in the event of aggression, and the states of the world can support this defensive effort. Russia is the one that invaded an independent and sovereign state, whose borders are recognized even by Moscow. That is why supporting Ukraine is about Western values and respect for international law, and not about the historical realities of eight decades ago. In all Western countries, Nazism is condemned and prohibited by law. On March 17, 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is accused of war crimes in Ukraine. On November 23, 2022, following the atrocities committed by Vladimir Putin's regime against Ukrainian civilians, the European Parliament listed Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Russia is accusing Europe of revanchism and Russophobia, but in reality, it is Putin's regime that resorts to revanchism, trying to remake the USSR and regain its "glory" and that of the Tsarist Empire. In fact, the establishment of the European Union was based on the abandonment of the idea of military, historical, political revenge, which caused two world wars in the heart of Europe. The negative attitude towards Russia in some states is not a consequence of US or EU policy, but results from the brutal behavior of the Russian army in Georgia and Ukraine or in more distant states (Syria, African states).
Not only has the issue of Russophobia never been raised in European politics, but on the contrary, numerous countries have sought to get closer to Russia and develop their economic and political relations with it; some continued those efforts even after the invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and only the large-scale invasion of 2022 (which came after years of anti-Western propaganda and attempts to undermine the Western states through disinformation campaigns, interference in electoral processes, encouraging some secessionist and far-right movements) convinced them that the Putin regime was aggressive and hostile. Terming Russia as a dangerous state is a direct consequence of the actions of the Putin regime, which endangers global stability, resorts to nuclear blackmail and challenges the norms of international law.
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