TW: discussions of the invasion of Ukraine, anti-Semitism, genocide, death, and Nazism

Caveat: I do not live in Ukraine or Russia, I am an American with a vested interest in Ukraine bc I have family there (including my little brother), but listen to actual Ukrainians please.

Looking at the talk around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I’m seeing a few folks pointing out how odd it is that Putin is citing “getting rid of Nazis in Ukraine’s government” as a reason for his unsactioned invasion, given Volodymyr Zelenskyy is, you know, Jewish. As many have already pointed out, there is a far-right nationalist movement in Ukraine, including a contingent of vocal neonazis. This is bad, we all agree. But this group doesn’t control the government, especially not to the same extent the far right controls the government of, say, the US.

BUT, what nobody has said, because it isn’t taught in the West for some godDAMN reason, is that the Nazis targeted Slavs and Soviet citizens for genocide too. Slavs were sent to concentration camps and killed en mass. In much greater numbers than any other group. Putin is drawing on very real, very powerful memories of an attempted genocide to try to convince Russians to support and carry out his attack on fellow victims of that same attempted genocide.

Real shitty thing to do, but at least now you know why.

(We’re not gonna get into the fact that a lot of the Soviet victims were from modern-day Ukraine because this isn’t about convincing you that Putin is doing horrific things. You already knew that. I WILL mention it though, because the West has a habit of equating the Soviet Union and modern-day Russia, which is a mistake)

Tldr: the Nazis killed an estimated 12 MILLION Slavs during the Holocaust and Putin is trying to use that horrific trauma to convince Russians to commit more genocide.