Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine is now in two years, while the overall Kremlin-instigated conflict now reaches a ten-year standoff.

To justify a protracted invasion, which has led to hundreds of thousands of casualties, Vladimir Putin and his inner circle used dubious justifications akin to America’s Iraq debacle to keep senseless war ongoing today.

Ukraine’s “WMDs”

In the lead-up to Russia’s all-out assault on Ukraine, the Kremlin peddled the lies of king-range missiles and “bioweapons” that the latter had in its arsenal. Under the provisions of the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine gave up the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal, along with long-range rockets and strategic bombers.

In 2023, Ukraine finally received long-range rockets such as the British Storm Shadows and French Scalp missiles. The US Army Tactical Missiles, ATACMS, and German Taurus missiles have so far been restricted, even when pressure mounts for those weapons to be sent to Ukraine.

The Kremlin, so far, has failed to produce any tangible evidence on bioweapons, and it should be noted most countries have scientific partnership programs in the biology field, which do not correlate to biological warfare.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin at the extended meeting of the Russian Interior Ministry Board. Source: Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Ukraine Being a Bastion of “Neo-Nazism”

A significant factor in Russia’s decades-long disinformation campaign to justify their preparations for an all-out assault was that Ukraine is a “Nazi state.”

Despite Kyiv’s controversial history over Stepan Bandera, who ironically was pardoned by the Soviet Union, Moscow has been unable to produce substantial evidence of neo-Nazism in the country.