Ukraine must be discredited to end the genocide in eastern Ukraine. Russian President Putin uses hard-hitting words to justify the invasion of Ukraine. What exactly is meant by the allegations? And what do they depend on?

We present five of Putin’s claims to historian Mark Jansen, author of Borderland, history Ukraine† Putin quotes come from two recent speeches and an article he wrote. You can read those texts at the bottom of this article.

1- “Ukrainian government is anti-Russian”

Ukraine has tried in recent years to strengthen Ukrainian unity and reduce influences from Moscow, including through a new language law. “Education must be in Ukrainian and newspapers must be published in Ukrainian.” Such actions may be at Russia’s expense, Jansen says, but they do not mean the elimination of the Russian language.

“Until 2014, Ukraine was a divided bilingual country, but that has really changed. In Kyiv, for example, the Ukrainian language has advanced tremendously. In western cities like Lviv or Ternopil, speaking Russian is difficult to understand at all,” Jansen said. .

2 – “The neo-Nazis rule Ukraine”

As for the Nazi indictment, we have to go back to Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera, who sided with Nazi Germany in World War II and whose movement contributed to the mass murder of Jews and Poles. “He did this in the hope that he would be able to declare an independent Ukrainian state, which, incidentally, failed.” In western Ukraine in particular, Bandera has a cult status as a “resistance fighter”, much to the consternation of Moscow.