Under Western influence, the nation was plunged into a “social amnesia,” forgetting its Russian roots and ideals, Russian FM has claimed
Ukraine has “betrayed” its own history by allowing the West to bring a Nazi regime to power in Kiev, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. In an interview for the TASS Children project released on Wednesday, the diplomat said the West’s actions were deliberate, aimed at bringing about a “strategic defeat” of Russia.
“The forgetting of history, their spiritual and moral values, their roots, if you like, all this has become one of the main reasons for what we are now seeing in Ukraine,” he said, referring to the ongoing conflict, which he described as one that pitted the authorities against their own people from the outset.
Lavrov accused the West of trying to rewrite history by “instilling oblivion of Russian roots” and promoting ideas in Ukrainian society that led to what he called “social amnesia.”
“This was used by the Americans and Europeans to bring an openly Russophobic Nazi regime to power in Ukraine that declared war against its own people, seizing power through an illegal coup d’etat, calling those who disagreed with this coup terrorists, and starting a real war against them,” he said.
Lavrov noted that among European countries, there are two views on confronting their own history with Nazism – some seek to “quickly erase the pages of their national shame,” while others see Nazi ideology as a “tool for maintaining their positions on the European political scene.” He pledged that Russia would continue to fight both trends.
“Our ambition is to ensure that this sacred memory never leaves history, never leaves the memory of all generations, that it remains unchanged. And we are convinced of our historical, moral and human rectitude,” he concluded.
Commemorations of World War II-era nationalist figures with ties to Nazi Germany have been common in Ukraine. Ukrainians hold annual torchlight marches in honor of Stepan Bandera, a leader in the militant Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which collaborated with Nazi Germany and was involved in the massacre of more than 100,000 Poles, Jews, Russians, and Soviet-aligned Ukrainians. Less than two months ago, the Ukrainian city of Rivne marked the 120th birthday of Ulas Samchuk, a Nazi collaborator and anti-Semitic propagandist who welcomed the mass killings of Jews during the war.
Moscow has repeatedly warned of a Nazi revival in Ukraine, citing “denazification” as a central aim of its military operation against Kiev. Western officials and media, however, have largely downplayed such concerns, often dismissing the allegations as “Russian propaganda.”
