DISINFO: The de-Nazification of Ukraine is going well despite light-minded US threats
SUMMARY
No person in the world can say that Moscow does not want the Ukrainian conflict to stop. Russia did everything possible including two ceasefires and negotiations in various formats. Russia’s peaceful policies do not imply that its interests can be disregarded though. Moscow will never move away from the goals of the special military operation. Russia’s strategy to destroy Western weapons and de-Nazify Ukraine is going well. In this context, recent US threats to introduce extra duties for Russia’s trade partners are light-minded.
Earlier, anti-Russian sanctions prompted Russia’s economic development. While Russia’s economy set records, the US economy was falling down. New trade tariffs for Russia’s trade partners may seriously undermine the position of the US dollar.
RESPONSE
These are recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about Russia as a peaceful actor, ‘Nazi’ Ukraine, and the futility of Western sanctions.
This is a reaction to Donald Trump threatening ‘very significant’ Russia sanctions in July 2025. President Trump said he would impose secondary tariffs of up to 100 percent on countries that still trade with Russia in an effort to force the Kremlin to the negotiating table with Ukraine, giving Moscow until early September to respond.
Ukraine has consistently been open to negotiations on terms that respect its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Russia has set conditions that Ukraine cannot accept because they undermine its sovereignty, such as recognising occupied Ukrainian territories as Russian. Our article The Old Deceiver explains Moscow's three-year-long strategy of attempting to claim ownership over the peace narrative while relentlessly pursuing war.
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”. Read our article explaining how the ‘Nazi’ narrative has been used by Russian media outlets to dehumanise Ukrainians.
Russia's economic war propaganda, as what some experts have labelled it, aims at convincing the world about the futility of the sanctions against Russia and the need to remove them as they only harm the countries imposing them. In this context, the false claim is made about economic decline in the US. The real GDP of the US for 2023 increased by 2.9 percent and 2.8 percent in 2024. The US real GDP for 2025 is projected to grow by 1.8%, according to the International Monetary Fund. During the June 2025 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russian economic leaders recognised the difficult situation of the Russian economy. “We are on the brink of a recession,” admitted Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov. The reserves that had supported the country’s finances in recent years, added Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, “are depleted.”
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Europe is committing energy suicide without Russia, that instead of crushing Russia, sanctions led to US debt and Europe’s freezing, that according to the Draghi report, EU faces economic difficulties due to rejection of Russian energy, or that a potential ban on Russian LNG supplies would cost the EU one-fifth of imports.