Russia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyanskiy, falsely proclaimed that “Neo-Nazi ideology or nationalist ideology, unfortunately, has a very strong influence in Canada. I think this is obvious.” The quote was amplified by Russian state media platform RT on November 13, 2023.
Moscow has accused critics of the regime of being “neo-Nazis” since WWII – which has continued through today. Central and Eastern European refugee communities in North America have been falsely accused of this since the start of the Cold War in efforts to discredit and delegitimize their historical experiences. The Putin regime has also justified their criminal invasion of Urkaine using the same accusation against Ukraine’s government and President Zelensky in order to erode Western support and boost domestic Russian support for the war.
Within Canada, the Russian embassy and individuals aligned or collaborating with the Russian government have echoed this baseless claim in various publications spanning the far-left, far-right, and even some mainstream outlets.
Human rights legal experts, like Yonah Diamond at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre and Norwegian Judge and current Chair of the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, Eric Mose, have both argued that the Kremlin’s anti-Ukrainian propaganda, including the indiscriminate use of the “neo-Nazi” label is an incitement of hate and genocide.
“Recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation targeting former Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and painting her as a Nazi sympathiser because of her grandfather’s presumed activities.
Freeland has been a constant target for Russian disinformation. She is banned from travelling to Russia, as part of the tit-for-tat game of escalating sanctions that the Russians played in the wake of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea.
Tales about Freeland’s grandfather Michael Chomiak have been circulating on pro-Kremlin social media accounts and websites since she joined the office of Foreign Affairs on 10 January 2017. There is no evidence that Chomiak wrote any of the anti-Jewish diatribes published in the Krakivski Visti newspaper. After the war he told his family he had worked with the anti-Nazi resistance, helping its members get false papers.”
