Russia is struggling to maintain the narrative that its conflict in Ukraine is similar to the Soviet Union’s battle against the Nazis in the Second World War, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (Mod) has said.
President Vladimir Putin consistently said he wanted to “denazify” Ukraine in the run up to his country’s invasion in February last year.
Putin, assisted by the country’s state media, has exploited the memory of the Second World War, which is a lynchpin of Russia’s national identity.
However, in its latest intelligence update on Saturday, the MoD said: The Russian state is struggling to maintain consistency in a core narrative that it uses to justify the war in Ukraine: that the invasion is analogous to the Soviet experience in the Second World War.”
It said that the country’s state media saying the cancellation of this year’s Immortal Regiment “Great Patriotic War” remembrance marches was on “safety” grounds is false.
The MoD said that the real reason they were cancelled is that Russian authorities are becoming increasingly concerned that attendees would highlight the increasing death toll from the war.
The update added that Wagner group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin has questioned if there are any Nazis in Ukraine - directly opposing Putin’s central justification for the conflict.
The military contractors currently have thousands of soldiers in Ukraine and have previously been accused of human rights abuses in the country, as well as in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Mali and Mozambique.
The MoD update added: “The authorities have continued attempts to unify the Russian public around polarising myths about the 1940s.
“On 12 April 2023, state news agency RIA Novosti reported ‘unique’ documents from FSB archives, implicating the Nazis in the murder of 22,000 Polish nationals in the Katyn Massacre of 1940.
“In reality, FSB’s predecessor agency, the NKVD, was responsible. Russia’s State Duma officially condemned Joseph Stalin for ordering the killings in 2010.”
It comes as thousands of people were evacuated on Saturday in a Russian city near the Ukrainian border after an explosive device was found at the site where a bomb accidentally dropped by a Russian warplane caused a powerful blast this week, authorities said.
The bomb blast late on Thursday rocked part of Belgorod, leaving a large crater and three people injured.
The Russian Defence Ministry quickly acknowledged that a weapon accidentally released by one of its own Su-34 bombers caused the explosion.
The governor of Belgorod province, Vyacheslav Gladkov, reported on Saturday that sappers examining the site of Thursday’s blast found and decided to detonate what he called an “explosive object” that was “in the immediate vicinity of residential buildings”.
Additional reporting by agencies
