As part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian state and state-controlled media have spread disinformation in their information war against Ukraine. This disinformation has also been spread and promoted by so-called Russian web brigades, using fake profiles on social media. The Ukrainian state and media have used propaganda and deception as well, although their efforts have been more limited than the Russian disinformation campaign.
Russian propaganda and fake news stories have attacked Ukraine's nationhood and accused it of being a neo-Nazi state, committing genocide against Russian speakers, developing nuclear and biological weapons, and being influenced by Satanism. Russian propaganda falsely accuses NATO of controlling Ukraine and of threatening and provoking Russia. These claims have been widely rejected as untrue and crafted to justify the invasion and even to justify genocidal acts against Ukrainians. The Russian state has denied carrying out war crimes in Ukraine; Russian media and internet activists give false alibis for Russian forces, or falsely blame attacks on Ukrainian forces instead. Some of the disinformation seeks to undermine international support for Ukraine and to provoke hostility against Ukrainian refugees.
Russian disinformation has been pervasive and successful in Russia itself, due to censorship of war news and state control of most media. In the Western world, the far-right and far-left have been most accepting of Russian narratives, and Russia has collaborated with both far-right and far-left groups to spread disinformation. Ukraine's government said that Russian disinformation had influenced some in the US Trump administration. Because of its disinformation campaign and attempts to stoke division and unrest, Russian media has been restricted and its reputation has been tarnished in many European and developed countries. Russia has been more successful spreading disinformation in the Global South, particularly in the Sahel region of Africa, where Russia uses private military companies to support local regimes (see Wagner Group activities in Africa).
Russian themes
Disinformation (a lie or exaggeration meant to sway opinion) has been spread by the Russian state, state-controlled media, propagandists, and Russian web brigades using fake profiles on social media. The aim is to justify Russia's war against Ukraine, and undermine those who oppose it. Russia seeks to sow disunity among Western countries who back Ukraine; to undermine support for Ukraine among the public; to convince them that sanctions aren't working; and to cover-up or create plausible deniability for Russian war crimes. Russia tailors its propaganda to its target audience, appealing to far-right, far-left, and anti-Western sentiments.
The following are common themes in Russian propaganda and disinformation, as well as some of the common rebuttals.
Denying Ukrainian nationhood and statehood
Russian propaganda has attacked Ukrainian nationhood and national identity, portraying Ukrainians as "Little Russians" or "part of an all-Russian nation". This has been a theme in Russian imperialist and nationalist rhetoric since the seventeenth century. Russian president Vladimir Putin has long questioned the Ukrainian people's identity and the country's legitimacy. In his 2021 essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians", Putin called Russians and Ukrainians "one people" and claimed there is "no historical basis" for the "idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians".Düben, B A. "Revising History and ‘Gathering the Russian Lands’: Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian Nationhood". LSE Public Policy Review, vol. 3, no. 1, 2023 Since then, Russia's official and media narrative is that Ukraine has always been Russian. In announcing the invasion, Putin repeatedly denied Ukraine's right to exist, claiming that it was created by the Russian Bolsheviks and that it never had "real statehood". In June 2025, Putin declared that "all of Ukraine is ours" because he considers Russians and Ukrainians to be "one people".
Björn Alexander Düben, professor of international affairs, writes that "Putin's historical claims do not hold up to serious academic scrutiny" and that he is "embracing a neo-imperialist account that exalts Russia's centuries-long repressive rule over Ukraine, while simultaneously presenting Russia as a victim of 'US imperialism'".
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and former Russian president, has called Ukraine part of Russia. He wrote that "Ukraine is NOT a country, but artificially collected territories" and that Ukrainian "is NOT a language" but a "mongrel dialect" of Russian. He has said that Ukraine should not exist in any form and that Russia will continue to wage war against any independent Ukrainian state.
Such denial of nationhood is said to be part of a campaign of incitement to genocide by Russian authorities. United Nations special rapporteurs have condemned the Russian occupation authorities for attempting "to erase local [Ukrainian] culture, history, and language" and to forcibly replace them with Russian language and culture.
After the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, Russian rhetoric portrayed Ukrainian governments as illegitimate, calling them the "Kyiv regime" or "junta". Putin said they were "led by a band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis", and claimed Ukraine is "under external control" by the West or the United States.
The official governmental website of Ukraine says that Ukrainians consider themselves an independent nation. A poll conducted in April 2022 by "Rating" found that the vast majority (91%) of Ukrainians (excluding the Russian-occupied territories) do not support the thesis that "Russians and Ukrainians are one people".
Russia has falsely asserted several times that foreign corporations, banks and investment funds—like BlackRock or Vanguard—control a large portion of Ukrainian soil and forbid the burial of Ukrainian bodies on that land. However, under Ukrainian law, foreign market agents like corporations and individuals are not allowed to own Ukrainian agricultural land.
Allegations of Nazism
Putin falsely claimed that the Ukrainian government were neo-Nazis and announced that one of his goals was the "de-Nazification of Ukraine". Putin's claims were repeated by Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council; many diplomats walked out in protest. These claims were repeated in Russian media to justify the war. In April 2022, Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti published an article by Timofey Sergeytsev, "What Russia should do with Ukraine", where he argued that Ukraine and Ukrainian national identity must be wiped out, because he claimed most Ukrainians are at least "passive Nazis". By May, references to de-Nazifying Ukraine in Russian media began to wane, reportedly because it had not gained traction with the Russian public.
These allegations of Nazism are widely rejected as untrue and part of a Russian disinformation campaign to justify the invasion, with many pointing out that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and had relatives who were victims of the Holocaust. Some of the world's leading historians of Nazism and the Holocaust put out a statement rejecting Putin's claims, which was signed by hundreds of other historians and scholars of the subject. It says:
The authors say that Ukraine "has right-wing extremists and violent xenophobic groups" like any country, but "none of this justifies the Russian aggression and the gross mischaracterization of Ukraine". The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum denounced Putin's claims, saying "once again, innocent people are being killed purely because of insane pseudo-imperial megalomania". The US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem condemned Putin's abuse of Holocaust history. Ukrainian Jews likewise rejected claims of Ukraine being a neo-Nazi state.
Kremlin claims of Nazism against Ukraine are partly an attempt to drum-up support for the war among its citizens. Russian propaganda has framed it as a continuation of the Soviet Union's "Great Patriotic War" against Nazi Germany, even though Russia supports far-right groups across Europe. In the words of Miriam Berger for The Washington Post, "the rhetoric of the 'fight against fascism' resonates deeply in Russia, which suffered huge losses in the fight against Nazi Germany". Some Soviet imagery was used as part of this propaganda drive, and Ukrainian flags were replaced with Victory Banners in some occupied towns.
Experts on disinformation say that Russia's portrayal of Ukrainians as Nazis helps them justify Russian war crimes; Russia's UN representative justified the Hroza missile attack in this way. Historian Timothy Snyder said the Russian regime calls Ukrainians "Nazis" to justify genocidal acts against them. He said pro-war Russians use "Nazi" to mean "a Ukrainian who refuses to be Russian". Russian neo-fascist Aleksandr Dugin proposed to simply "identify Ukrainian Nazism with Russophobia". Dugin argued that Russia should be the only country allowed to define Ukrainian Nazism and Russophobia, in the same way that Jews have what he calls a "monopoly" on the definition of antisemitism.
Article 16 of the Constitution of Ukraine states: "To ensure ecological safety and to maintain the ecological balance on the territory of Ukraine, to overcome the consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe - a catastrophe of global scale, and to preserve the gene pool of the Ukrainian people, is the duty of the State". A number of pro-Russian online accounts have used this sentence to claim it proved Ukrainians are "fascists" and "Nazis". In reality, this article of the Constitution only affirms the protection for people who faced adverse health and ecological impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Article 24 of the Constitution states that "There shall be no privileges or restrictions based on race, colour of skin, political, religious and other beliefs, sex, ethnic and social origin, property status, place of residence, linguistic or other characteristics". Ukraine has publicly condemned "all forms of Nazism, neo-Nazism, racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance."
Ukrainian officials respond that Russia's own actions in Ukraine are like those of Nazi Germany, and some commentators, including Snyder, have likened Putin's Russia to a fascist state (see Ruscism). Many Russian units who took part in the invasion are linked to neo-Nazism themselves, including the Rusich Group and Kremlin-sponsored Wagner Group.Šmíd, Tomáš & Šmídová, Alexandra. (2021). Anti-government Non-state Armed Actors in the Conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Czech Journal of International Relations, Volume 56, Issue 2. pp.48-49. Other openly neo-Nazi groups have been involved in recruiting, training and fighting on the Russian side, such as the Russian Imperial Legion, AAST and Atomwaffen Division Russland. Russian far-right groups also played a major role among the Russian proxy forces in Donbas.