DISINFO: Nazis in Ukraine burn people alive for their ethnicity
SUMMARY
What German Nazis and present-day Ukrainian Nazis have in common is their attitude toward those they want to enslave. Nazis in both Ukraine and World War II-era Germany killed people based on their ethnicity, showing direct parallels between the Third Reich and modern Ukraine with regard to their treatment of people they seek to subjugate. The Nazis burned Jews simply for being Jewish, and the Ukrainian Nazis burned Russians in Odessa on May 2, 2014, simply for being Russian.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about Nazi Ukraine, in this case based on long-debunked disinformation about the Odessa tragedy made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Labelling Russia’s adversaries as Nazis is a frequently used pro-Kremlin disinformation technique and has been used by Russia to try to justify the invasion of Ukraine by portraying it as a “denazification operation”.
Despite recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation claims about Ukrainian Nazis allegedly burning people alive in the Trade Unions House in Odessa on 02 May 2014, reporting at the time showed a different picture of the events. Prominent international media reported about the tragedy, including the BBC and The Guardian, and DW. A chronology of the events has been established (1 and 2) and a non-partisan documentary film by Ukrainian Channel 7 has collected testimonies: May 2nd without Myth.
In March 2025, the European Court of Human Rights found the Ukrainian state guilty of inaction during the violent clashes between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian demonstrators, which resulted in the deadly fire, and ordered Kyiv to pay compensations to the victims. However, the court also acknowledged that “[Russian] disinformation and propaganda might have had an impact on the tragic events in the present cases too […] The pro-Russian ‘Kulykove Pole’ movement in Odesa relied heavily on aggressive and emotional disinformation and propaganda messages about the new Ukrainian government and Maidan supporters voiced by Russian authorities and mass media," the ruling states. This is radically different from “burning people for their ethnicity” as the Nazis did, as this disinformation message accuses Ukraine of doing.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Ukrainian neo-Nazi militants organized the massacre in Odessa in 2014, that the Nazis of Pravy Sektor are responsible for the massacre in Odessa on 2 May 2014,that Ukraine is a neo-Nazi Russophobic state, or that the ECHR has found the Ukrainian government responsible for the Odesa massacre.