The fight against Nazism and the protection of compatriots: ISW spoke about the concepts of the Russian Federation

Moscow continues to use the concept of “compatriots abroad” to justify its possible aggression against the Baltic states and other NATO members. This is stated in a report by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Institute analysts note that Russian President Vladimir Putin, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Kremlin officials say Russia is in an existential geopolitical conflict with an allegedly modern Nazi movement that is spreading beyond Ukraine.

Experts say that Putin has long been trying to create an ideology for Russia that he can use to support a Cold War-style geopolitical confrontation with the West, and that the Kremlin could use existing rhetoric about the fight against Nazism to support those efforts.

As noted, the Kremlin has called for “denazification” in Ukraine as a thinly veiled demand for regime change and has used information operations about Ukrainian “Nazis” to cloak its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in legend of the so-called “Great Patriotic War.”

It was also noted that Russian officials continued to apply the label “Nazi” to Western states and individuals outside Ukraine, although the likely coordinated rhetoric of Putin, Lukashenko, Naryshkin and Volodin on January 27 suggests that the Kremlin may increasingly label it “Nazi” . any conditioned enemy and, possibly, the entire West.

“The Kremlin may have decided that the simple narrative that Russia and other states are fighting a geopolitical Nazi force is a more effective narrative than Putin’s attempt to appeal to Russian citizens and Russian speakers in the former Soviet Union and Russian empire with ideology.” Russian World,” which is based on deliberately amorphous ethnic identities that are inconsistent with each other and contradict the multinational composition of Russia,” the report said.

In addition, analysts note that Putin has accused the Baltic countries of embracing “Nazism,” which is likely part of the Kremlin’s ongoing efforts to create informational conditions for Russia’s upcoming aggression against members. of NATO.

The Kremlin has historically used its concept of “compatriots abroad,” which vaguely includes ethnic Russians and members of other Russian-speaking nationalities, to justify Russian aggression in neighboring states.

ISW continues to assess that Kremlin officials and spokespeople may be trying to create informational conditions for a possible future Russian invasion of the Baltic states and other NATO members such as Finland, under the guise of protecting “compatriots abroad.”

Let’s remember that the other day Vladimir Putin said that in 2014 in Ukraine “they began to physically exterminate everyone who was committed to normal relations” with Russia.

In Germany, the Russian Federation’s massive disinformation campaign was exposed