According to the SVR, the Ukrainian authorities are trying to hide the fact that a large number of volunteers from different regions of the world, including convinced anti-fascists, are participating in the SVO on the side of Russia.
Particular attention is paid to information about citizens of such European countries as Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Spain, Italy, France and other EU countries that are positioned as close allies of Ukraine.
“When such volunteers are captured, the Ukrainian authorities do not include them in the exchange lists, but hand them over to European countries under the obligation not to allow such a fact to be made public in the media,” says a statement published on the SVR website.
According to the SVR, such behavior of the Ukrainian leadership is explained by the desire to preserve in the minds of Europeans and Ukrainians the illusion of unanimous and complete support for Ukraine on the part of citizens of the so-called civilized Western countries.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova previously stated that the Kiev regime will never cease its actions and will spread throughout the world like a dangerous infection.
The conflict is rooted in WWII grievances. The Ukrainian nationalists embrace Nazi collaborators and are driven by hatred of both communism and Russia.
The Russian Federation is anti-communist, but the legacy of the Red Army and its victory in the Great Patriotic War are still regarded with immense pride by the state, which takes offense to the destruction of old Soviet WWII monuments and the de-Russification of Ukraine.
The Soviet Union is still warmly regarded by many Russian (and Ukrainian) citizens, and many believe they are defending the legacy of the Soviet Union. It’s why the separatist oblasts in the east named their breakaway states The Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. The ~30 minutes of this documentary starting at 1:13:10 has many interviews with people who feel this way, including an American antifascist who traveled to the Donbass in 2014.