Putin’s Kremlin is obsessed with world war two

Putin's claim that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was intended to 'denazify' the country looked absurd when he made it last week. In the days since, as Russia adopts a more aggressive military response with cluster bombs reportedly being dropped and children caught in the crossfire, his ludicrous justification has been exposed for what it is. But for many Russians, who have not seen the horrific images emerging from Ukraine, Putin's claim is unlikely to seem so fanciful.

While it seems darkly ironic for Putin to call Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky – who is Jewish – a neo-Nazi, there is nothing new about this false parallel being made. The idea that fascists control Ukraine has been a mainstay of Russian propaganda ever since the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, which overthrew the disgraced president Viktor Yanukovych. Since then, Russian politicians and media have deployed every trick to convince audiences that Ukrainian Nazis had usurped power, hell-bent on the genocidal slaughter of Ukraine’s Russian-speakers. The West supposedly funded this diabolical campaign to overturn the end of world war two, while many ordinary Ukrainians wanted Russia to save them.

The Kremlin is obsessed with world war two and it has privatised the Great Victory of 1945 over Nazism to meet its own political needs, including to justify its annexation of Crimea, military intervention in Donbas and full-blown invasion of Ukraine.

But if in 2014 the Russian government’s use of world war two looked like a tactic for uniting the nation around its increasingly authoritarian reign, then over the last two years it has begun to seem as if Vladimir Putin really believes his own propaganda.

Some of the craziest aspects of this alternative history have emanated from a man called Vladimir Medinsky, who is currently leading peace talks with Ukraine. Medinsky, who served as culture minister from 2012 to 2020 and is head of the influential Russian Military Historical Society, thinks that Russians have an extra chromosome borne of heroism throughout their nation’s tragic 20th century history. Two years ago, Medinsky was moved from the culture department to become Putin's presidential aide, where he focusses on questions of memory and history. At the time, it was seen as a demotion. Now it looks more like an effort to bring him closer to Putin’s inner circle. He appears to be crucial to the shaping of Putin's propaganda.

But Russian politicians aren’t the only ones who have been deluding themselves about the lessons of the past. Western leaders have also been drinking their own historiographical Kool-Aid about the end of history: indulging themselves that the world was on an interminable march to liberalism or that two countries with a Mcdonald's would never go to war. Drunk on the memory of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we in the West have resisted the idea that the Yugoslav wars provided just as good a template for Europe’s future as 1989. There are, after all, clear parallels between Putin and Slobodan Milosevic: a once pragmatic yet amoral politician who brings his country to ruin by starting senseless and cruel wars aimed at uniting Serbia’s historic lands. Milosevic was intent on stoking resentments from world war two to inflame a sense of national victimhood. Putin is doing something very similar in Russia.

Even when the growth of national populism made it abundantly clear that history was making a comeback, most liberal European countries simply bemoaned it. They had long since forgotten to fight for their values and – worse still – stopped embodying them. Instead the West has used a lazy historical narrative to justify being lazy about its security and way of life. Now it is paying the price, having been caught out by Putin's aggression.

Just as in the late USSR, political language was reduced to meaningless mantras, as western politicians repeated tired phrases about commitment to transparency, fairness, and human rights. They did so while facilitating the corrosive effect of Russian (and others’) dirty money and misuse of courts. The Ukrainian nation’s unthinkably courageous defence has reminded everyone that those phrases used to mean something – and they could again. In just a few short days, Swiss and Swedish neutrality – and a generation of German defence policy – has been completely overturned.

Ukraine has offered the West a symbolic lifeline and now the West must offer Ukraine a literal one. To mean anything this must involve sacrifice. The sanctions on Russia’s Central Bank and removal of Russia from Swift are a start but the UK and its allies must go further by seizing assets of Kremlin-linked individuals and giving them to the Ukrainian resistance. They should also devise a collective Euro-Atlantic Marshall Plan for Ukraine, offering fast-track EU membership, rejecting Russian energy sources, and criminalising the Kremlin’s facilitators in its own countries.

These are deliberately bold actions but any support for Ukraine’s military defence should be carried out as quietly as possible, with a shrewd awareness that nuclear conflict won’t help anyone and that Putin is an unpredictable actor feeling increasingly cornered.

There are also actions western countries should not take, such as banning Russian students or deliberately targeting ordinary individuals. While some Russians may support this war, most have no idea of its reality. We also know that thousands are risking loss of livelihood, violence and imprisonment to protest their government’s actions in Ukraine. In an apathetic, traumatised, and increasingly dictatorial country, these protestors have no chance of changing government policy, yet they risk their safety just to offer symbolic support to Ukrainians.

Thankfully, the West can do more than offer just symbolic support. Having finally shed their historical delusions, western nations can join the fight for democracy, justice and rule of law. As Ukrainians will tell them, they have some catching up to do.