ISW sees scary rhetoric
Is Russia attacking again under the Nazi pretext?
January 28, 2024, 12:02 p.m
The commemoration of the consequences of Nazi Germany’s crimes through the Leningrad blockade has a bland aftertaste in view of the statements made by politicians in Russia. According to ISW, President Putin’s “Nazi” rhetoric continues to create pretexts for confrontation with the West.
Russia’s baseless accusations against Ukraine that there is a “Nazi regime” at work there that must be eliminated are not new. The Kremlin leadership reels off this narrative week after week to justify the war against the country. Nowadays, however, similar statements are increasingly no longer limited to Ukraine, but also refer to other countries. This became particularly clear when commemorating the blockade of Leningrad by the German Wehrmacht in World War II.
Russian President Putin, for example, took part in the opening of a monument – and, according to the Institute for War Studies (ISW), not only renewed well-known “Nazi” accusations against Ukraine, but also claimed that countries supported “Nazi ideology and – methods”. He linked this claim to a number of European states that “promote Russophobia as state policy.” Putin declared that Russia would “do everything to suppress and finally eradicate Nazism.”
The director of the foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, explained according to ISW also that Russia will not wage its fight against current “Nazi supporters” half-heartedly. And the chairman of the Russian State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, claimed in a recent Telegram post: “For the leadership of NATO countries, fascist ideology has become the norm.” At the same time, he accused Western states of supporting an alleged “genocide” against Russians in Ukraine and warned of a third world war.
A recent analysis by US war researchers says Putin has long sought to construct an ideology for Russia “that he can use to support a geopolitical confrontation with the West reminiscent of the Cold War.” The Russian president could therefore use the rhetoric of fighting Nazism to support these efforts. The Leningrad commemoration may have been a welcome opportunity for the Kremlin to further spread certain narratives among the people.
Accusations against Baltic states
The ISW writes: “The Kremlin may have decided that simply claiming that Russia and other states are fighting a geopolitical Nazi power is a more effective immediate narrative than Putin’s attempt to oppress Russian citizens and Russian-speaking people in the territory of the former Soviet Union and the United States to address the Russian Empire with the ideology of the ‘Russian World’ (Russkiy Mir).”
The fear behind all of this should be clear: Ukraine may not be the last country to be militarily attacked by Russia amid accusations of an alleged “Nazi” regime that mistreats the Russian population.
“Putin specifically accused the Baltic states of adopting ‘Nazism’, likely as part of the Kremlin’s continued efforts to create information conditions for future Russian aggression against NATO members,” analyzes ISW. Although the Russian president did not explicitly claim that the Baltic states were persecuting Russians or Russian-speaking people, Kremlin officials accused the Baltic governments of “neo-Nazi” policies and the oppression of Russians and Russian-speaking people.