Why does Russia think there are Nazis in Ukraine?

In 2014, Russian separatists took over government buildings in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Russia took advantage of this chaos to pour weapons and volunteers into the region.

Ukrainian militias formed to fight the separatists. One of these units was a battalion of white supremacists. Ukraine's constitution guarantees freedom of speech, so this militia battalion was unchanged when it was integrated into the Ukrainian Army.

Russia used the existence of this battalion as proof that Ukraine was run by Nazis for a pretext to invade.

[leelande]

I mean if azov is torturing people i feel that goes a bit beyond freedom of speech

[Haiesta]

Every time you said ‘separatist’ I kept thinking about The Clone Wars

[yukitakaoni]

guess who got applauded in Canada recently?

[LmTheDuck]

"ukraine cant have naz!s they have a jewish president"

"america cant have racists they had a black president"
its all the same

[birdattorney]

Why does Russia think there's nazi in Ukraine,

" Because in 2014, nazi took control of government buildings"

Wasnt so hard

[dcheb]

ignoring the fact that their hero is Bandera?

[JohnJohnson-fydt]

I mean at this point it's just "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"

[WackRusDud]

It's like saying "I can't be racist, I'm Black!"

[konahigham]

This is genuinely the first time I've ever heard someone talk about casus beli to do with war outside of a RTS game lol

[DrEdgarr]

It's not just Azov,
There are tons of other ones like Aidar, Right-Sector etc.

And you forget how much cultural impact Azov had, they organised children's summer camps and community centers and many other political/cultural activities....

[BManStan]

So this was their "Iraq has WMDs we need to invade" excuse.

[davidcabreonmunoz]

The funny thing is that if you search for videos of Ukrainian prisoners of war, you will see that many of them have swastika tattoos.

[Jdalio]

He thinks there's nazis there because there are, even UKRAINE agrees and admits that!!

[wilburgwonka]

Yeah, but the Azov Batalion isn't the only neonazi group. There's also the Tornado and Aidar Battalions, the Right Sector, Military Order Centuria, Ukrainian Freikorps, C14. There's way too many "proud boys".

[awnikRaihan]

Just to note, Azov was banned and blacklisted as radical terrorist in Canada just until before the war . Also Canadian force are directed by the govt that they need to remove any Azov member from Canadian managed training program.

[josueamador]

question should be: Why do people think that nazis are nazis ?

[hegyesipeter]

hmm you skipped the part civilians chasing other civilians into a building and lit it up eventually

[israelmcmahon]

Cut to Canadian Parliament giving TWO standing ovations for a UKRAINIAN SS officer that fought in WW2 last week....Zelensky was there and also applauded. 🤡🤡🤡

[teamcybr]

So basically "we can't afford to turn away experienced fighters right now"

[pauljenkins]

"tortured some separatists" wtf that's still not a good look.