Accusing Russia of genocide or war crimes won't halt Putin's Ukraine war

By Trudy Rubin

When Russian soldiers invaded Lubyanka, a village near the ravaged Kyiv suburb of Bucha, the Russians forced all the men to assemble in a central square. Then the invaders demanded that the Nazis step forward.

"The men laughed," I was told by Iryna Rayko, a Ukrainian American whose sister in Lubyanka recently informed her by phone of the details. "They said, 'There are no Nazis here, we are just Ukrainians who love our country.'"

Luckily none of these men were murdered in the square in February. But the Russian military's fixation on rooting out "Nazis" reflects the Big Lie Vladimir Putin tells his people to justify the Ukraine war. He insists that Ukraine is led by Nazis ― backed by the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ― and that the country is riddled with Nazi sympathizers.

Putin's Big Lie provides the Russian military with justification for more war crimes against civilians (after all, they're Nazis). It justifies the Russian president's goal of bringing Ukraine back under control of Greater Russia. It also allows him to blame Russian military crimes on Ukrainian "Nazis" who kill their own people.

So Putin will pay no heed to Western charges of war crimes or genocide, and Russians won't press him to do so. There is no hope of a negotiated end to the war unless he and the Russian public can be forced to face the truth.

In his Feb. 24 speech announcing the invasion, Putin pledged to "de-Nazify Ukraine" and called its leaders "drug addicts and neo-Nazis" who were committing "genocide" against Russian-speakers. (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired back on Twitter that Russia had attacked his country "as Nazi Germany did.")

What makes Putin's Nazi trope so bizarre is that Zelensky is Jewish (as is his prime minister) and lost members of his family in the Holocaust. The far right in Ukraine has only one parliamentary seat, and commands only a tiny fraction of the support that the far right garners in Germany or France ― or in Russia.

Yet the Kremlin constantly blames the Russian military's war crimes ― which the world is watching live ― on one battalion in the Ukrainian army composed of nationalist ideologues who are tough fighters. If Russia uses chemical weapons in Mariupol, Putin will claim that the Azov battalion is responsible. He has already proclaimed that the dead bodies in Bucha were fakes.

So far, a majority of Russians are buying Putin's lies.

New public opinion research from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in partnership with Russia's Levada Analytical Center shows that 53 percent of Russians strongly support Russia's "military operation" in Ukraine, while 28 percent somewhat support it.

Even if one doubts the poll, there are endless stories of Ukrainians rebuffed on the phone by Russian relatives when they try to describe what the invaders are doing to their country.

It's typical to hear stories like this one, from Yevhen, another Lubyanka native, whose last name I'm not using because he is serving in the Ukrainian military. He told me via WhatsApp: "My father's brother who lives in Russia called him and said, 'We are saving you from Nazi barbarians.' My father replied, 'You are crazy. Come here and I will show you who are Nazis.'" But the hard facts didn't change the Russian relative's mind.

The devilish cleverness of Putin's Big Lie is that it feeds on Russians' historic pride about their World War II triumph over Nazi Germany, which is celebrated each year on May 9 as Victory Day with a huge parade in Red Square. Russian friends tell me the letter Z on invading Russian tanks is a throwback to the words Na Zapad, meaning "To the West," which were painted on military vehicles headed toward Berlin during World War II.

Putin reportedly wants to announce a win over Ukraine's "Nazis" by Victory Day in May this year.

It may seem unimaginable to Americans that this Nazi trope can brainwash much of the Russian public in the age of the internet. Yet most Russians still get their news from state-controlled TV and radio, on which Putin and state-controlled media pundits constantly push the Ukraine-Nazi message.

The barrage of anti-Nazi rhetoric has been unrelenting since Putin's first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. One example: An appalling April article from the state-owned Ria Novesti news agency by Timofey Sergeytsev, argues "Ukronazism" is "more a threat to the world and Russia than … German Nazism." Sergeytsev contends that the majority of Ukrainians must be subjected to harsh "denazification," which requires an end to the sovereign Ukrainian state.

This is the kind of stuff Russians read and hear every day.

Of course, Americans shouldn't be too surprised that Putin has been able to hoodwink tens of millions of Russians who can't access real news. We live in a country with open access to information, yet about one-third of the population has been brainwashed by Donald Trump's Big Lie that he won the election.

Putin's Big Lie is proof that, even in the internet age, an autocrat can hypnotize his country with propaganda that reaches Hitlerian levels. Putin, like Trump, may even believe his own falsehoods.

Lost in his lies, this Russian war criminal won't respond to rational discourse.

Putin can resist sanctions by convincing his public of the need to sacrifice in order to defeat the new Nazis. He will only back down if forced by military defeat on the field.

Trudy Rubin (trubin@phillynews.com) is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. This article was distributed by Tribune Content Agency.