Featured Image Credit: CNN/synel/Alamy Stock Photo
Topics: World News, Ukraine, Russia
Emma Guinness
A Ukrainian woman has revealed the question Russian soldiers 'always' ask amid the ongoing war between the countries.
The revelation was made to CNN in the recently liberated Ukrainian town of Pisky-Radkivski, in Western Ukraine, where one resident, Varvara, said the Russian soldiers didn't bother them.
However, another woman beside her, named Raisa, went on to reveal the surprising question they would always ask.
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"Nazis, Nazis, where are the Nazis?" she remembers the Russian soldiers asking.
As reported by the New York Times, the soldiers' question was a reflection of the Russian lie that Ukraine was filled with Nazis in a bid to inspire its people to fight.
The news outlet revealed that data showed that efforts to spread the misinformation increased to 'unprecedented levels' when Russia launched its full scale-war in Ukraine on 24 February.
Larissa Doroshenko, a disinformation researcher at Northeastern University, said of the propaganda: "It would help to explain why they're establishing this new country in a sense.
"Because the previous government were Nazis, therefore they had to be replaced."
Jeffrey Veidlinger, a professor of history and Judaic studies at the University of Michigan, said that while the claim is false, there is evidence that a lot of Russians believe it.
"You see it on Russian chat groups and in comments Russians are making in newspaper articles," Veidlinger said. "I think many Russians actually believe this is a war against Nazism."
"The war against Nazism is really the defining moment of the 20th century for Russia," he continued. "What they're doing now is in a way a continuation of this great moment of national unity from World War II.
"Putin is trying to rile up the population in favor of the war."
This was reflected by a speech President Vladimir Putin gave on 9 May, where he alluded to the crimes of World War Two in a bid to inspire Russian people to fight.
The Russian president said: "You are fighting for our motherland so that nobody forgets the lessons of World War II. So that there is no place in the world for torturers, death squads and Nazis."
Support for the far right is so low in Ukraine that all of the groups combined did not receive the minimum five percent of the vote required for parliamentary representation in the 2019 election.
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