A businessman linked to the Kremlin would have commissioned graffiti depicting the swastika on the walls of Ukraine’s streets: this is the reconstruction of the newspaper Rolling Stone, which has published a long article about the affair in the last few hours. The aim of such an operation, writes the American newspaper, would have been to give Putin a pretext for launching the invasion that began on February 24 and which Moscow repeatedly justified as “fighting the neoNazis.”
The man behind the maneuver
“Many sources,” including US intelligence reports, told Rolling Stone that the man at the center of the “conspiracy” was real estate, banking and oil tycoon Pavel Fuks, who would offer between December and February $500 to $1,500 to some “Street criminals” to wreak havoc on city streets with proNazi graffiti. According to Rolling Stone, the Russian police forces were behind the Fuks operation. Fuks would have been forced to take part in the operation and threatened to stop his activities in the region if he was denied: at least that’s what his selfproclaimed friend, former Ukrainian kickboxer Oleg Plyush, told the press, who have agreed to do so if necessary to repeat his assurances under oath. The victim did not respond to emails sent to his accounts, nor did his American attorney, John Lomas. Rolling Stone claims it has not been able to independently verify the connection between the vandalism incidents and the design Fuks allegedly starred in.
NeoNazism in Ukraine: between truth and propaganda
Desecrating Jewish sites and using Nazi symbols to foment riots has been a wellknown subversive tactic used by Russian intelligence since the Cold War, as evidenced by the testimonies of Oleg Kalugin — a former KGB general — in his book Spymaster. In Ukraine, as in many former Soviet states, ultraright formations are indeed active: just think of the origins of the wellknown Azov Battalion, founded in 2014 by militant Andriy Biletsky and currently incorporated as a permanent part of Ukraine’s National Guard military unit. The farright Svoboda party is represented in parliament, albeit with just over 2% of the vote, although these and other farright formations are known to have played a role in the street movements that forced the thenRussian president to resign in 2014, per Yanukovych. Apparently, this is in no way sufficient to support Putin’s denunciation of the alleged dominance of Nazirelated fringe groups in Ukraine. Especially since the democratically elected President Volodymyr Zelenskyj is at the head of the Kyiv government, who is not only Jewish, but also lost a number of relatives in the wake of the Holocaust.
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