On Russia’s disinformation and historical falsification to justify its war of aggression against Ukraine

B100079/2025

European Parliament resolution on Russia’s disinformation and historical falsification to justify its war of aggression against Ukraine

(2024/2988(RSP))

The European Parliament,

– having regard to its declaration of 23 September 2008 on the proclamation of 23 August as European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism,

– having regard to its resolutions on historical remembrance, including its resolutions of 2 April 2009 on European conscience and totalitarianism, of 19 September 2019 on the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe, and of 15 December 2022 on 90 years after the Holodomor: recognising the mass killing through starvation as genocide,

– having regard to its previous resolutions on Ukraine and Russia,

– having regard to Resolution 1481 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of 26 January 2006 on the need for international condemnation of crimes of totalitarian Communist regimes,

– having regard to the Statement of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of 2 May 2023 No. 3078-IX on employment by the political regime of the Russian Federation of the ideology of Russofascism and condemnation of the basics and practices of this ideology as being totalitarian and misanthropic,

– having regard to Rule 136(2) of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas 2025 marks the 85th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocols, with which Stalin and Hitler conspired to divide Europe into spheres of influence between two totalitarian regimes, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and which paved the way for the outbreak of World War II, leading to unprecedented levels of human suffering and the occupation of countries in Europe for many decades to come;

B. whereas the conclusion of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, envisaging the planning and initiation of a war of aggression, amounted to an international crime against peace, for which no justification can be found in international law;

C. whereas since 2009, 23 August has been commemorated as the European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of all Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes;

D. whereas in its resolution of 19 September 2019 on the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe, the European Parliament proposed recognising 25 May (the anniversary of the execution of the Auschwitz hero Witold Pilecki) to be established as International Day of Heroes of the Fight against Totalitarianism;

E. whereas after World War II, half of Europe became free and democratic, while its other half remained behind the Iron Curtain controlled by the totalitarian Soviet Union, which brutally imposed its satellite communist regimes, which divided the continent for half a century, while the consequences of this division are still felt to this day;

F. whereas tens of millions of people were executed, politically persecuted and suffered Soviet atrocities during and after World War II, including 18-20 million imprisoned in the Gulag system of forced labour camps, 1.5-2 million of whom did not survive, 6 million people who were forcibly deported, and nearly 5 million who were politically repressed by security structures, at least 1 million of whom were subsequently executed; whereas the Holodomor-genocide organised by the communist regime of the USSR in Ukraine in 1932-1933 resulted in estimated demographic losses of a minimum of 4.5 million people; whereas as a means of subjugating conquered nations and indigenous peoples, the Soviet regime committed genocide against Crimean Tatars, Chechens and other nations, resembling the Circassian genocide committed by the Russian Empire in the 19th century; whereas tens of thousands were forced to flee from their homeland to escape from the invasion of the red army, many of whom perished while most survivors of the journey would never return to their homeland;

G. whereas Russia has failed to acknowledge its role in starting World War II, to assume its responsibility for atrocities committed in territories occupied by the Soviet Union or to provide redress to victims; whereas, contrary to the crimes committed by the Nazi regime, the crimes and genocides committed by communist dictatorships in Europe in the 20th century, such as mass deportations from the Baltic States, Poland and other countries, mass executions such as the massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, the massacre of Latvian army officers in Litene, the 1945 Augustów Roundup, the creation and operation of concentration camps and the Gulag or the man-made famine in Ukraine, the invasions to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968, have not received a full international legal and political assessment and condemnation and this has contributed to the instrumentalisation of history under Putin’s rule in Russia;

H. whereas Russia, as the state claiming to be both a continuator and the successor of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire, falsely continues to claim to have an exclusive sphere of influence embracing its neighbouring states and actively denies their sovereignty, national identity and right to exist, thus perpetuating the legacy of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and reviving the tsarist ambition of imperial conquest and colonisation; whereas the full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched on 24 February 2022 was preceded by Russia’s preposterous demands that the US and other NATO countries recognise its exclusive interests in Ukraine and other former Soviet, Soviet-occupied and Soviet satellite countries;

I. whereas Russia’s continuing colonial imperial policy resulted in the invasion of Chechnya, military aggression against Georgia in 2008, its aggression against Ukraine with the occupation of Crimea and the war in Donbas in 2014, and culminated with Russia’s full-scale illegal, unprovoked and unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine that began on 24 February 2022, systematically terrorising Ukraine’s civilian population, destroying its strategic infrastructure, undermining Ukrainian identity and heritage, and committing crimes against humanity and war crimes with a clear demonstration of a genocidal intent towards the Ukrainian people;

J. whereas Russia consistently threatens EU countries with military aggression, and has conducted sabotage operations and carried out attacks against individuals on EU and NATO soil; whereas Russia has been conducting hybrid warfare against NATO allies, EU Member States and EU candidate countries and has been proven to have interfered with EU democratic processes;

K. whereas the Kremlin has been using falsified history as a casus belli, systematically whitewashing Soviet crimes and spreading historical disinformation to justify Russia’s aggression against its neighbouring states; whereas Putin’s regime has instrumentalised history in attempt to secure the loyalty of the population by creating nostalgia for the supposed greatness of the Soviet empire, falsifying the history of Central and Eastern Europe, rejecting Khrushchev’s policy of acknowledging and condemning Stalinist crimes, reneging on Gorbachev’s recognition and condemnation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the subsequent crimes, and declaring the collapse of the Soviet Union to be the greatest tragedy of the previous century;

L. whereas Russia has never truly transitioned into a post-imperial nation state, and under Vladimir Putin, new generations of Russians have been misled into adopting the country’s imperial identity; whereas this unrepentant imperialism has directly contributed to the current full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and remains a significant threat to international security;

M. whereas Russia has been obstructing historical research, denying access to Soviet archives, and persecuting historians and civil society organisations working to investigate and assess Soviet crimes, as well as the crimes committed by the current regime; whereas attempts to tell the truth about those crimes, including the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine are being persecuted under Russian law; whereas to date Moscow and its proxy regime in Minsk have rejected access to documents on the genocidal Katyn massacre and Augustów Roundup, attempting to distort the truth about these crimes by silencing research, persecuting historians and journalists, and removing memorial sites dedicated to these horrific Soviet atrocities from the public sphere;

N. whereas the whitewashing and glorification of Soviet crimes, including the full justification of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and subsequent acts of aggression, the claims to have a zone of exclusive interest comprising all the territory of the former Soviet Union and Russian tsarist empire, taken together with the emphasis on superiority and fake exclusive mission of the Russian state and the rejection of democracy, human rights and the rule of law as allegedly alien Western values have become the main pillars of the ideology of ‘Ruscism’ or ‘Russofascism’, which is behind Russia’s imperial and neo-colonial stance;

O. whereas in some Member States, communist and Nazi ideologies and symbols, as well as the symbols of Russia’s ongoing aggression, are prohibited by law;

P. whereas since 2023, Parliament has held an annual commemoration of the victims of the mass Soviet deportations, which has involved paying tribute to victims and reading the names of those deported from Soviet-occupied lands;

1. Acknowledges the shared responsibility of the totalitarian regimes in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union for starting World War II with the aim of conquering and dividing Europe into two spheres of exclusive influence on the basis of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocols, and condemns Moscow’s recent attempts to re-impose them;

2. Denounces the practices and claims to the establishment of zones of exclusive interest at the expense of sovereignty and territorial integrity of states as being incompatible with international law, in accordance with which each state has a sovereign right to choose its own future, including its defensive alliances; recalls that no consideration of whatever nature, whether political, economic, military or otherwise, may serve as a justification for aggression;

3. Remembers World War II as the deadliest and most brutal conflict in human history; recognises as its consequence the Soviet occupation and mass crimes against the people and nations that fell under control of the Soviet empire, crimes which have not received a consistent and principled international evaluation nor resulted in victims receiving adequate redress; emphasises that ensuring accountability is a key condition for effective prevention of such crimes in future and notes that impunity for unevaluated crimes allows them to be repeated;

4. Regrets that the Russian Federation has not acknowledged Soviet crimes, condemned Stalinist crimes, or renounced its imperial past, characterised by its colonial approach towards its neighbouring states and conquered nations, and that this constitutes one of the factors behind its new wave of imperial wars of aggression;

5. Emphasises that painful, unresolved issues, such as the 1943-45 Volyn massacre, are also being exploited by Russia to sow division, and calls on the Ukrainian authorities to seriously address this problem, recognising the need to conduct a search for the victims, exhume their remains and ensure their proper burial;

6. Condemns in the strongest possible terms Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, other acts of aggression such as the occupation and annexation of Ukraine’s territory, war crimes and crimes against humanity that Russia has committed in Ukraine, its policy of dehumanisation of Ukrainians and its denial of their national identity;

7. Expresses grave concern about Russia’s national security strategy, approved by Vladimir Putin on 31 December 2015, which adopts aggressive new concepts from its military doctrine released on 25 December 2014; underlines that a key shift in this strategy is the explicit focus on protecting ‘traditional Russian spiritual-moral values’ from the West, signalling Russia’s readiness to weaponise these values, as well as the institutions that promote them;

8. Condemns Moscow’s exploitation of Orthodoxy for geopolitical purposes, notably through the instrumentalisation of the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) as a tool to influence and exert control over Orthodox populations in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova;

9. Condemns systematic falsification and distortion of history perpetrated by the Kremlin and its proxies, which is used as a weapon in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, aimed at justifying Russia’s crimes and promoting imperial nostalgia in the minds of the Russian population;

10. Reiterates its recognition of mass Soviet deportations and the Gulag system as a crime against humanity and of the Holodomor as genocide against the Ukrainian people; assesses the deportation of all the Crimean Tartar people in 1944 and other nations, such as Chechens, as well as crimes committed during the occupation of Poland since 1939 and the Baltic States and other countries, as genocide, including mass deportations into Siberia, the Katyn massacre and the Augustów Roundup;

11. Commends the judicial, legislative, diplomatic, civil society and other initiatives aimed at administering justice and prosecuting crimes or providing redress to victims and compensation for damage, as well as research, awareness raising, recognition, and evaluation of the crimes of totalitarianism in Europe, particularly those of Nazi and communist regimes; encourages academic research into, and education on, Eastern European history and culture, and Russian colonialism from the 18th to the 21st century; recalls that countries forcefully incorporated into the Soviet bloc after the World War II never received proper compensation neither from the Germany nor the Soviet Union, despite atrocious damage to their infrastructure and population caused by both totalitarian regimes;

12. Underlines that many victims of World War II who are alive today are denied access to courts allowing them to claim justice and compensation for Soviet and Nazi crimes; calls on the Commission, and especially Commissioner Marta Kos, to develop effective mechanisms that would ensure a clear, internationally recognised legal path for all victims of human rights abuses to make their claims and to allow them to receive reparations from the perpetrating state or its successor;

13. Calls on all EU Member States to make a clear and principled assessment of the crimes and acts of aggression perpetrated by the totalitarian communist regimes and the Nazi regime and the victims that were harmed; calls for a condemnation of Soviet communist crimes at an international level, such as the UN; calls for awareness raising and systemic integration of the history of Nazi and communist totalitarian crimes into school curricula in all EU Member States;

14. Invites the Member States to establish projects of historical memory and remembrance;

15. Regrets the continued use of symbols of totalitarian regimes in public spaces and calls for an EU-wide ban on the use of both Nazi and Soviet communist symbols as well as symbols of Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine; expresses its support for the building of a pan-European memorial in Brussels for the victims of the 20th century totalitarian regimes;

16. Responds to the appeal of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine by condemning in the strongest possible terms the nationalist imperialist ideology, ‘Russofascist’ policy and practices of the current Russian regime, which foregrounds Russia’s military aggression, its efforts to challenge European security order, and its threats of further aggression against Europe;

17. Notes with concern that, over the years, part of Russia’s strategy to justify its aggression has involved historical falsification, including the destruction or looting of national heritage; underlines that this is particularly evident during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where Russian forces have stolen, looted or destroyed tens of thousands of works of art; calls on the Commission to ensure that the full restitution of Ukraine’s cultural heritage, as well as the Romanian National Treasure and the national heritage of other affected Member States, is prioritised in any future actions involving the Russian Federation;

18. Reiterates its call for the establishment of a special international tribunal for the punishment of the crime of aggression against Ukraine, which could end impunity and the lack of a clear evaluation of repeated Soviet and Russian imperialist aggressions and atrocities against its neighbours and of all the ideology behind those acts;

19. Expresses its support for the efforts of the International Criminal Court to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and, possibly, genocide as a part of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine; strongly condemns instances of non-cooperation with the Court in the execution of arrest warrants;

20. Reiterates its call for 25 May (the anniversary of the execution of the Auschwitz hero Witold Pilecki) to be officially established and celebrated as International Day of Heroes of the Fight against Totalitarianism, which will be an expression of respect and a tribute to all those who, by fighting tyranny, demonstrated their heroism and true love for humankind, and will also provide future generations with a clear example of the correct attitude to take in the face of the threat of totalitarian enslavement;

21. Believes that the destructive legacy of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact can only end when sovereign nations neighbouring Russia holding Euro-Atlantic aspirations, such as Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, can freely implement their foreign policy choices without interference or obstruction;

22. Believes that swift introduction of reforms leading to the Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine and other countries in the region would have a positive effect on Russia’s transformation by demonstrating to the Russian population that those countries no longer belong to Russia’s sphere of influence and by providing an inspiring example of prosperity and democratic development based on European values of human rights and peace, which could replace the pursuit of nostalgic imperial glory with pursuit of economic and social well-being;

23. Maintains that a full military victory by Ukraine is the only path towards sustainable peace in Europe and towards the end of the Russian Federation’s imperial stance, as it will not only end the Ukrainian suffering, but will also help Russia surrender its imperialist mentality and ideology, opening up possibilities for democratic change in Russia as well as in other authoritarian countries such as Belarus;

24. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the governments and parliaments of the Member States, the Russian Duma, the parliaments of the Eastern Partnership countries and the UN General Assembly.