THE NEW YORK TIMES: Ukraine’s government is “openly neo-Nazi” and “pro-Nazi,” controlled by “little Nazis,” President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia says.
American officials led by President Biden are responsible for the “Nazification” of Ukraine, one of Russia’s top lawmakers says, and should be tried before a court. In fact, another lawmaker says, it is time to create a “modern analogy to the Nuremberg Tribunal” as Russia prepares to “denazify” Ukraine.
In case the message was not clear, the Kremlin’s marquee weekly news show aired black-and-white footage on Sunday of German Nazis being hanged on what is now central Kyiv’s Independence Square. The men drop, dangling from a long beam, and the crowd cheers.
The language of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been dominated by the word “Nazi” — a puzzling assertion about a country whose president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish and who last fall signed a law combating anti-Semitism. Mr. Putin only began to apply the word regularly to the country’s present-day government in recent months, though he has long referred to Ukraine’s pro-Western revolution of 2014 as a fascist coup. » | Anton Troianovski | Thursday, March 17, 2022
Mike Isaac contributed reporting from San Francisco, and Catherine Porter from Toronto.
