At least since the start of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, the story has been spreading that many Ukrainians are attached to National Socialism. In well-known propaganda channels such as the Telegram group “News from Russia”, which is run by the allegedly independent journalist Alina Lipp, you can find claims about Ukrainian Nazis en masse. Such postings have an impact – over 183,000 people subscribe to Lipp’s channel alone (as of November 25).
A simple search query found the word “Nazi” 285 times, “National Socialism” 22 times and “swastika” 17 times (as of November 25).
But what about the narrative of Ukrainian Nazis? And what about the alleged evidence pro-Russian accounts are posting on social media?
1. Allegation: A video circulated in a tweet, allegedly from Arabic news channel Al Jazeera, is about three drunk Ukrainians spreading Nazi symbols at the World Cup in Qatar.
DW fact check: Wrong
The Russian propagandist and journalist Vladimir Solovyov also distributed the video on his Telegram channel, where it was viewed almost 400,000 times (as of November 25, 2022). In the style of the Al Jazeera medium, the video reports that three Ukrainians painted a Hitler beard on a graffiti of the World Cup mascot and wrote a Hitler salute next to it.
In addition, the three Ukrainians destroyed ten posters in the vicinity of the Al Bayt football stadium, the video says. They were then arrested without defending themselves.
The video is a fake, as our research shows and Al Jazeera itself explains in its own fact check.
The clip features Al Jazeera’s logo and fonts that look very similar to those used in the media’s original videos (see an example here). In the video itself, the three alleged Ukrainian fans are not shown, only example images of Ukrainian fans. This is sometimes common in journalism, but it is interesting that no further details are given about the men – which can make you suspicious, because since the general mobilization, men between the ages of 18 and 60 have not been allowed to leave Ukraine at all. In addition, the Ukrainian team did not even qualify for the World Cup.
It is also noticeable that the Al Bayt stadium was misspelled in the video, namely El Beit. There are also no pictures of the allegedly destroyed posters. A scene is also shown in which the Ukrainian fans are allegedly arrested – but the police officers’ clothing does not match the clothing of the law enforcement officers who, according to the Qatar Interior Ministry, will be used for the World Cup.
Uploading the badge seen on the arm of one of the alleged police officers in a reverse image search takes you to various websites indicating that it is a military badge. It is not clear from which country.
Conclusion: The video was checked by various fact checkers and is wrong. Al Jazeera, as the alleged author, also confirms the forgery.
2. Allegation: “Some Ukrainian fighters wear the slogan ‘To each his own’ on their helmets as a sign of their commitment to neo-Nazism,” writes the aforementioned Alina Lipp in her Telegram channel and publishes a photo that is intended to serve as evidence .
DW fact check: Wrong
The photo is clearly manipulated, as our research shows. The slogan “To each his own” was emblazoned on the main gate of the Buchenwald concentration camp and has been charged with National Socialism ever since. He hints at the extreme right-wing and National Socialist view that everyone supposedly gets what they deserve.
The inscription was put on the soldier’s helmet with image editing software, as a reverse image search shows. In addition, the original photo was mirrored.
And the men in the photo are not unknown: they are the Ukrainian band Antytila, who no longer only sing, but also defend Ukraine in the Russian war of aggression. The band became internationally known because they recorded a remix of the song “2 Step” together with the musician Ed Sheeran during the war. International media such as the Washington Post used the photo as a cover photo, on which the band members were wearing soldiers’ uniforms.
3. Allegation: In a Ukrainian shopping mall there is a staircase with a large swastika on it – this implies a video that is distributed by this Twitter user, among others. DW fact check: Misleading
At a shopping mall called Gorodok in Kyiv, a giant LED swastika appears to be glowing on a stairway and a large red heart above, according to the video, which has been shared time and time again on social media.
In fact, the video is authentic – but misleading. According to a statement from the mall published on Facebook three days later, the incident happened on February 16, 2019, around 1:30 p.m. Hackers are said to be responsible for the LED swastika. A security guard notified leading authorities directly after noticing the Nazi symbol on the lighted staircase. Then the mall immediately turned off the lights.
The case was then passed on to investigative authorities. On July 29, 2019, the Kyiv prosecutor’s office announced in a press release that a 17-year-old had accessed the computer system with the “TeamViewer” software. The software icon can be seen on the video.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the password of the system was briefly visible, which the young person used to dial in and display the swastika. In Ukraine it is forbidden to publicly disseminate Nazi symbols. Numerous fact checks have already been published for the video that is circulating.
Conclusion: A swastika was actually displayed in the shopping center in Kyiv for a few minutes. However, the incident is a hacker attack and not long-term LED lighting.
So the fact of the matter is: many of the claims about alleged Ukrainian Nazis are fabricated or misleading. The narrative persists, however, because Vladimir Putin and Russian propagandists keep spreading misinformation about it.
In his speech shortly before the attack on Ukraine at the end of February, Vladimir Putin said that Russia had to “denazify” Ukraine. The so-called denazification is a historical term that refers to the policies of the victorious Allied powers for Nazi Germany after the Second World War. They wanted to liberate the country from National Socialist influences and remove people who were burdened with it from their offices.
The comparison to Ukraine is wrong, however, Andreas Umland said in a DW interview in February: “This talk about Nazism in Ukraine is completely out of place.”
Umland is an Analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS). “The President of Ukraine is a Russian-speaking Jew who won the last presidential election by a smashing score against a non-Jewish Ukrainian candidate.”
Although there are also extreme right-wing groups in Ukraine, they are relatively weak compared to many European countries: “We had a united front of all right-wing extremist parties in the last parliamentary elections in 2019 and this united front got 2.15 percent.”
Right-wing Ukrainian combat units fighting the separatists in eastern Ukraine have also been criticized in the past – above all the Azov regiment. This was founded by a right-wing extremist group, but was integrated into the Interior Ministry’s troops, the National Guard, in autumn 2014, says Andreas Umland.
After that, the movement and the regiment were separated – the latter still uses the appropriate symbols, but is no longer associated with right-wing extremism. According to Umland, right-wing extremist soldiers were occasionally noticed during training courses for the military, but: “That was then uncovered and scandalized.”
Author: Kathrin Wesolowski
The Original of this post “What is the propaganda about “Ukrainian Nazis” all about?” comes from Deutsche Welle.
