From ‘biological weapons’ to ‘pro-Nazi’ Ukraine: How Putin is trying to justify the war

Roskomnadzor, the organization in charge of monitoring and censoring Russian mass media, ordered the Russian press to eliminate any content that referred to the offensive in Ukraine as a “war,” and instead describe it as “a special military operation for the protection of the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk,” in line with the official government position. Several television broadcasters, including the Russian edition of the BBC, were blocked after refusing to do so.

Both NGOs and journalists in the Donbas region confirm that no systematic killing has occurred in the area since the conflict broke out in 2014. Both Ukrainian forces and the Russian-backed separatists have carried out summary executions, but this cannot be considered genocide. At the Munich Security Conference in February, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the term genocide was inapplicable to the situation in Donbas, describing Russia’s claims as “ridiculous.”

Russian is the second-most spoken language in Ukraine. In 2019, the previous Ukrainian government approved a law to strengthen the Ukrainian language. Under this law, classes must be given in Ukrainian and all Russian media must also provide a version in Ukrainian.

Neither side has met the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 to establish peace in eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin has been calling on Kyiv to concede the separatist area a special status via a constitutional reform (point 11) and to hold elections there (point 12). For there to be fair elections, the Ukrainian government has demanded that all armed groups leave the area (point 10), that all Russian heavy weapons be withdrawn (point 3) and for Kyiv to recover control of the Donbas border with Russia (point 9).

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy never announced any deployment of nuclear weapons in his country. At the Munich Security Conference in February, the president said that he would call on the signatories of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum to demand guarantees of security. Failing these assurances, he said the deal would be declared void. Under that agreement, which was signed by Russia and the United States, Ukraine gave up the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the USSR in exchange for guarantees on its territorial integrity and sovereignty. Zelenskiy said that he had tried three times to convene the signatories, and that his fourth attempt would be the last. He did not, however, speak of nuclear rearmament.

The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is Jewish. The Kremlin was on friendly terms with the leader from 2019 until 2021, when relations broke down following the arrest of Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Moscow Ukrainian politician, and the sanctions against television channels linked to him. Russia quickly recognized the electoral wins of both Zelenskiy and his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko. The accusations that the government is “pro-Nazi” is based on the fact that, during the conflict in Donbas, Ukraine’s armed forces included volunteers from the Azov and Pravy Sektor (Right Sector) battalions, whose members are accused of harboring neo-Nazi ideology and honoring the ultranationalist Stepan Bandera.

The United States makes no secret of the fact that it finances several Ukrainian laboratories under the Cooperative Threat Reduction program to prevent outbreaks of possible pandemics. The origin of this program dates back to the fall of the Soviet Union, when Washington supported transferring military investigations to civilian ones in the former USSR. The Kremlin bases its claims of Ukraine’s “biological weapons” on statements made by Victoria Nuland, the US under secretary of state for political affairs, who detailed the activity of these civilian laboratories. But Russia’s arguments have no credible bases. The Russian offensive in Ukraine, however, has increased the risk that samples in these facilities will escape and spread.

The official Russian rhetoric denied the possibility of war until it recognized the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk on February 21, the same day that Putin ordered troops into the eastern Ukrainian region. The night of Friday, February 18, Russian-backed separatists posted videos in which they ordered an “emergency” evacuation of the civilian population due to the supposed threat of an imminent Ukrainian offensive and the growing violations of the ceasefire introduced on February 17. But the metadata from these videos show that they had been recorded on Friday 16, even though Denis Pushilin, the head of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic, is heard saying “today, on February 18.” The week before the war, Putin met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Following this meeting, the Russian leader said that he was open to negotiating NATO’s proposals.