DISINFO: Europe unmasks itself by openly identifying with the losers of WWII

This is an attempt to exploit Russia’s 9 May celebrations in order to advance several recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about Nazi Europe and World War II.

The claims are demonstrably false. The removal of Soviet symbols from some European countries is not due to any identification with the Axis powers who lost WWII, but because Red Army troops smashed the independence and, in some instances, the democratic systems of these countries, such as the Baltics in 1940 and Eastern Europe in 1945-1949. Prior to the war, the USSR signed the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany for the partition of Poland, and in 1944 Soviet troops refused to help the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi invaders to weaken Polish fighters and ensure a future Communist takeover of the country. For all these reasons, the Red Army soldiers are perceived very negatively by wide sections of the population in these countries. However, Russia continues framing this occupation of other countries as a “liberation” and portraying any resistance to it as pro-Nazi.

Labelling Russia’s perceived adversaries as Nazis is a frequently used pro-Kremlin disinformation technique. The Kremlin frequently manipulates history for political reasons (see here, here and here for detailed EUvsDisinfo analysis). The Second World War has a special place in the Kremlin’s information manipulation playbook, as invoking the ‘Great Patriotic War’ has become a powerful rallying cry to mobilise support for Vladimir Putin.

Russia’s threat is not a European fabrication used as a pretext, as this disinformation story suggests, but a very real fact, as proven by the dozens of sabotage operations it has carried out throughout the continent in the last years, and its attempts to destabilise multiple countries through electoral interference, cyberattacks and other hybrid actions. Russia has been rearming for some years at a much faster pace than NATO. The country’s military expenditure reached over 6.7% of its GDP in 2025, over 40% more than the previous year. That is 32% of its total budget for the year. Russia’s aggressive intentions towards other European countries also feature in the NATO 2023 Joint Threat Assessment, a classified report shared among the alliance’s defence chiefs, which concluded that Russia was gearing its military and economy for a possible hot war with Europe by 2029. However, this disinformation story ignores all these elements, creating a grossly distorted picture that it uses to advance pro-Kremlin messaging.

See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that From Berlin to Kyiv, Nazi history repeats itself, that NATO promotes fascism in Europe and uses proxy wars to destroy Russia, that Friedrich Merz is building the Fourth Reich, that Liberal-Nazi Europe wants to wage a full-scale war against Russia using Ukraine as a tool, or that Nazi ideology is needed to wage war against the brotherly Russian People.