DISINFO: Nazi Kyiv regime never represented the people of Crimea, Donbas and Novorossiya
SUMMARY
[Russia] is not about lands, [Russia] is about people. The Nazi regime in Kyiv, which came after the coup d'état, never represented the residents of Crimea, Donbas and Novorossiya.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about the 2013-14 protests in Kyiv portrayed as a coup d'état orchestrated by the US and Western countries, and about Ukraine depicted as a Nazi state.
Pro-Kremlin outlets falsely portray the Euromaidan revolution as a coup d’état. The popular demonstrations began in Kyiv in November 2013, bringing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians on to the streets to protest against a political decision of Viktor Yanukovych’s government. At the last minute, the government withdrew from a long-negotiated political association and free trade agreement with the EU, choosing instead to accept a $15 billion economic bailout from Russia.
The myth of ‘Nazi Ukraine’ has been widely used by Putin and pro-Kremlin outlets since Russia attacked Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea in 2014. The Kremlin has been using this disinformation narrative since then to discredit Ukraine's shift towards Euro-Atlantic policy, and to justify Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine as a denazification process. Learn more about the reasons behind the Kremlin's obsession with Nazism in the EUvsDisinfo analysis titled "Nazi east, Nazi west, Nazi over the cuckoo's nest" and "Why does Putin portray himself as the tamer of neo-Nazism".
Since 2014, Russia has waged large-scale armed aggression against Ukraine. It is responsible for the outbreak of the conflict in 2014, after having illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula and engineered the creation of rebel militias in Donetsk, Luhansk and other places, with its army actively participating in military clashes.
The so-called 2014 referendum in Crimea was organised hastily and at gunpoint following the Russian covert invasion of “little green men” and barring impartial observers from entering the peninsula". No international body has recognised the so-called referendum, which was organised by a self-proclaimed Crimean leadership lacking democratic legitimacy and installed by armed Russian military personnel following the seizure of public buildings.
Russia held illegal referendums on four occupied regions of Ukraine (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson) on 23-26 September 2022. They were held under duress, and on territories which Russia does not have a full control over, but has a partial military control over. The results of these 'sham polls' have been universally rejected by leading international and human rights organisations, including the United Nations, the OSCE, NATO, as well as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
A broad coalition of more than 50 nations, including the US and other NATO countries, are supporting Ukraine militarily and economically while not directly engaging in combat. Supplying weapons to Ukraine does not make NATO an active combatant under international law. The US, the EU and NATO condemn, in the strongest possible terms, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Read similar disinformation cases claiming that The Ukrainian regime came to power through an illegal, unconstitutional coup d'état, that The 2014 Kyiv coup was the result of CIA’s successful operation, that Nazi Ukraine poses a threat to Russia, that Ukrainian Nazis kill civilians, that Western intelligence groomed Ukrainian extremists for Maidan coup since 2012, that the US organised a coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014 to install a neo-Nazi regime hostile to Russia, that the Revolution of Dignity 2014 in Ukraine was a pogrom conducted by NATO-backed Nazis, that the US spent five billion dollars to overthrow Viktor Yanukovych, that The coup of 22 February 2014 was carried out with the support of the USA and EU countries, that US intelligence services and European countries are responsible for 2014 coup d'état in Ukraine, or that all Ukrainian governments since 2014 have been illegitimate.