Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026.

The UK has debunked a core belief at the heart of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as the conflict approaches the four-year mark.

In its latest post on X, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) unpacked how the Kremlin uses anti-Nazi sentiment to motivate the Russian public in the war against its neighbours.

Putin and his top team have baselessly tried to paint Ukrainians – particularly those in government – as 21st Century Nazis, suggesting history is repeating itself.

The Russian authoritarian justified his February 2022 offensive by falsely alleging Ukraine needed to be “denazified” and “demilitarised”.

But, as the UK officials pointed out, ethnic Ukrainians actually “constituted a significant proportion of the Soviet Union’s Red Army in the Second World War” in the fight against Nazi Germany.

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