Vladimir Putin's narrative to justify the Ukraine war as a "denazification" operation to rid the country of its Nazi overlords has failed, according to a state media expert.
During the first months of the invasion, Putin and his Russian propagandist cronies claimed the Ukrainian public was in peril and being routinely oppressed by its fascist dictators without a shred of evidence to prove their wild theory.
The Kremlin and its media apparatus then started pumping out the word "denazification" through their channels to justify Moscow's full-scale invasion, which it called a "special military operation" to liberate the former Soviet territory.
But the media campaign didn't have the desired effect, largely because the Russian public didn't understand the word, one expert believes.
Eto Buziashvili, a Research Associate analysing Russian state propaganda for the Atlantic Council, believes Putin's denazification "narrative was a big failure".
She told The Mirror: "On the one hand they have the information that it’s not a special military operation, that many Russians have died.
"But interestingly the denazification narrative was a big failure."
By analysing Russian state media, Ms Buziashvili found mentions of the word "denazification" dropped dramatically at the start of May.
The term had been fluctuating up until the beginning of this month when it dropped so low it was rarely mentioned in the media.
The same findings can be seen on Google Trends, where keyword searches for the fabricated word also fell off during this period.
Ms Buziashvili explained: "There was a really interesting report saying the Russian public did not understand what denazification is and that’s why the Kremlin dropped this narrative.
"There was even an example when the Kremlin’s chief propagandist struggled to describe what it meant.
"This came after mobile pollings and street polls asking people basically if they knew what denazification is and the majority didn’t know, which was why the Kremlin decided to completely drop this narrative at the beginning of May.
"Usage of the word denazification in Russia and in state media dropped dramatically from the start of May."
The original report, from Proekt - an independent investigative journalism outlet in Russia - cited examples in February and then March when chief Kremlin propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov struggled to describe the term for 30 minutes on his Rossiya 1 TV show.
Just weeks later the same Kiselyov - who is the head of the federal state news agency Rossiya Segodnya - told viewers Britain should be flooded twice with the tyrant's most-advanced nuclear missiles.
The TV anchor proposed the use of Russia's new hypersonic big beast Satan-2, officially named Sarmat, to wipe the country off the map.
Another propagandist, branded "Putin's voice", last month threatened Moscow won't stop its military push until forces reach Stonehenge.
The weekly show of firebrand television anchorman Vladimir Solovyov has previously threatened to use nuclear Zircon missiles to bomb Britain back to the Stone Age.
In a new threat, he was challenged by a Ukrainian pundit on how far the Russian westward invasion would go before it halted.
“Well, when we have to, then we will,” he said.
“Where will we stop? Well, as I was saying today, maybe Stonehenge. Liz Truss says she's the one fighting the war.”
