Disinformation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
As part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian state and state-controlled media have spread disinformation in their information war against Ukraine. Ukrainian media and politicians have also been accused of using propaganda and deception, although such efforts have been described as more limited than the Russian disinformation campaign.
Russian propaganda and fake news stories have attacked Ukraine's right to exist and accused it of being a [|neo-Nazi state], committing [|genocide against Russian speakers], [|developing nuclear and biological weapons], and being [|influenced by Satanism]. Russian propaganda also accuses NATO of controlling Ukraine and building up military infrastructure in Ukraine to [|threaten Russia]. Some of this disinformation has been spread by so-called Russian web brigades. Russian claims have been widely rejected as untrue and crafted to justify the invasion and even to justify genocidal acts against Ukrainians. The Russian state has denied carrying out war crimes in Ukraine, and Russian media has falsely blamed some of them on Ukrainian forces instead. Some of the disinformation seeks to undermine international support for Ukraine and to provoke hostility against Ukrainian refugees.
Russian disinformation has been pervasive and successful in Russia itself, due to censorship of war news and state control of most media. Because of the amount of disinformation, Russian media has been restricted and its reputation has been tarnished in many Western and developed countries. Russia has been more successful spreading disinformation in the Global South, particularly in the Sahel region of Africa, where Russia uses private military companies to support local regimes.
Russian themes
Disinformation has been spread by the Russian state, state-controlled media, propagandists, and Russian web brigades as part of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Its purpose is to build support for Russia's invasion, and to weaken opposition to the war. It also seeks to sow disunity among Western countries who support Ukraine; to counter NATO; and to cover up or create plausible deniability for Russian war crimes.Russian documents were obtained and filed in court by the FBI, which outline a Russian operation to manipulate influential people in Europe and to target people on social media with posts, comments and fake news. The goal being to sow division, undermine support for Ukraine, and discredit Ukraine's allies using psychological warfare. The documents identified Germany as particularly vulnerable to Russian influence.
The following are common themes in Russian propaganda and disinformation, along with some of the common rebuttals.
Denying Ukrainian nationhood and statehood
Russian propaganda has attacked Ukrainian nationhood and national identity, portraying Ukrainians as "Little Russians" or "part of an all-Russian nation". This has been a theme in Russian imperialist and nationalist rhetoric since the seventeenth century. Russian president Vladimir Putin has long questioned the Ukrainian people's identity and the country's legitimacy. In his 2021 essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians", Putin called Russians and Ukrainians "one people" and claimed there is "no historical basis" for the "idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians". Since then, Russia's official and media narrative is that Ukraine has always been Russian. In announcing the invasion, Putin repeatedly denied Ukraine's right to exist, claiming that it was created by the Russian Bolsheviks and that it never had "real statehood". In June 2025, Putin declared that "all of Ukraine is ours" because he considers Russians and Ukrainians to be "one people".Björn Alexander Düben, professor of international affairs, writes that "Putin's historical claims do not hold up to serious academic scrutiny" and that he is "embracing a neo-imperialist account that exalts Russia's centuries-long repressive rule over Ukraine, while simultaneously presenting Russia as a victim of 'US imperialism'".
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and former Russian president, has called Ukraine part of Russia. He wrote that "Ukraine is NOT a country, but artificially collected territories" and that Ukrainian "is NOT a language" but a "mongrel dialect" of Russian. He has said that Ukraine should not exist in any form and that Russia will continue to wage war against any independent Ukrainian state.
Such denial of nationhood is said to be part of a campaign of incitement to genocide by Russian authorities. United Nations special rapporteurs have condemned the Russian occupation authorities for attempting "to erase local culture, history, and language" and to forcibly replace them with Russian language and culture.
After the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution, Russian rhetoric portrayed Ukrainian governments as illegitimate, calling them the "Kyiv regime" or "junta". Putin said they were "led by a band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis", and claimed Ukraine is "under external control" by the West or the United States.
The official governmental website of Ukraine says that Ukrainians consider themselves an independent nation. A poll conducted in April 2022 by "Rating" found that the vast majority of Ukrainians do not support the thesis that "Russians and Ukrainians are one people".
Allegations of Nazism
Putin falsely claimed that the Ukrainian government were neo-Nazis and announced that one of his goals was the "de-Nazification of Ukraine". Putin's claims were repeated by Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council; many diplomats walked out in protest. These claims were repeated in Russian media to justify the war. In April 2022, Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti published an article by Timofey Sergeytsev, "What Russia should do with Ukraine", where he argued that Ukraine and Ukrainian national identity must be wiped out, because he claimed most Ukrainians are at least "passive Nazis". By May, references to de-Nazifying Ukraine in Russian media began to wane, reportedly because it had not gained traction with the Russian public.These allegations of Nazism are widely rejected as untrue and part of a Russian disinformation campaign to justify the invasion, with many pointing out that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and had relatives who were victims of the Holocaust. Some of the world's leading historians of Nazism and the Holocaust put out a statement rejecting Putin's claims, which was signed by hundreds of other historians and scholars of the subject. It says:
The authors say that Ukraine "has right-wing extremists and violent xenophobic groups" like any country, but "none of this justifies the Russian aggression and the gross mischaracterization of Ukraine". The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum denounced Putin's claims, saying "once again, innocent people are being killed purely because of insane pseudo-imperial megalomania". The US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem condemned Putin's abuse of Holocaust history. Ukrainian Jews likewise rejected claims of Ukraine being a neo-Nazi state.
Kremlin claims of Nazism against Ukraine are partly an attempt to drum-up support for the war among its citizens. Russian propaganda has framed it as a continuation of the Soviet Union's "Great Patriotic War" against Nazi Germany, even though Russia supports far-right groups across Europe. In the words of Miriam Berger for The Washington Post, "the rhetoric of the 'fight against fascism' resonates deeply in Russia, which suffered huge losses in the fight against Nazi Germany". Some Soviet imagery was used as part of this propaganda drive, and Ukrainian flags were replaced with Victory Banners in some occupied towns.
Experts on disinformation say that Russia's portrayal of Ukrainians as Nazis helps them justify Russian war crimes; Russia's UN representative justified the Hroza missile attack in this way. Historian Timothy Snyder said the Russian regime calls Ukrainians "Nazis" to justify genocidal acts against them. He said pro-war Russians use "Nazi" to mean "a Ukrainian who refuses to be Russian". Russian neo-fascist Aleksandr Dugin proposed to simply "identify Ukrainian Nazism with Russophobia". Dugin argued that Russia should be the only country allowed to define Ukrainian Nazism and Russophobia, in the same way that Jews have what he calls a "monopoly" on the definition of antisemitism.
Article 16 of the Constitution of Ukraine states: "To ensure ecological safety and to maintain the ecological balance on the territory of Ukraine, to overcome the consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe - a catastrophe of global scale, and to preserve the gene pool of the Ukrainian people, is the duty of the State". A number of pro-Russian online accounts have used this sentence to claim it proved Ukrainians are "fascists" and "Nazis". In reality, this article of the Constitution only affirms the protection for people who faced adverse health and ecological impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Article 24 of the Constitution states that "There shall be no privileges or restrictions based on race, colour of skin, political, religious and other beliefs, sex, ethnic and social origin, property status, place of residence, linguistic or other characteristics".
Ukrainian officials respond that Russia's own actions in Ukraine are like those of Nazi Germany, and some commentators, including Snyder, have likened Putin's Russia to a fascist state. Many Russian units who took part in the invasion are linked to neo-Nazism themselves, including the Rusich Group and Kremlin-sponsored Wagner Group. Other openly neo-Nazi groups have been involved in recruiting, training and fighting on the Russian side, such as the Russian Imperial Legion, AAST and Atomwaffen Division Russland. Russian far-right groups also played a major role among the Russian proxy forces in Donbas.
Like many countries, Ukraine has a far-right fringe, such as Right Sector and Svoboda. Analysts generally agree that the Russian government greatly exaggerates far-right influence in Ukraine, as there is no widespread support for far-right ideology in the government, military, or electorate. In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, a coalition of far-right parties including Right Sector received only 2% of votes and did not win any seats. Ukraine's Azov Brigade began as a far-right volunteer militia. It was a focus of Kremlin propaganda, which falsely claimed they were "anti-Russian neo-Nazis persecuting ethnic Russians". Azov has been mentioned on Russian TV more often than Putin's ruling United Russia party. By the time of the invasion, the brigade had been largely de-politicized. A 2022 Counter Extremism Project report concluded that the Azov Brigade can no longer be defined as neo-Nazi.