Russia declared its independence on 12 June 1990, which meant independence from the USSR republics, and adopted the “Declaration of State Sovereignty.” This date is now celebrated as “russia Day”.

In the years that have passed since the day of the declaration of independence, the foundations of the so-called “new doctrine” have been formulated by the russian ideological institutions. The “special civilizational mission”, “updated history”, “superiority and supremacy” over other peoples, totalitarianism and imperialism of the russian type, exclusively “russian Orthodoxy”, etc. are among its components.

The geopolitical instruments of influence, blackmail of other countries, including the supply of energy carriers, the threat of military force, atomic bombs, war, seizure, destruction of democratic foundations, suppression of protests abroad, etc. are in the jaws of the russian foreign policy. The contemporary russian policy, in the author’s opinion, is a type of totalitarian ideology, a symbiosis of the major principles of fascism/Nazism and Stalinism. A typical manifestation of racism, by which fascism can always be recognised, is a lie: a lie to one’s people and the world. Let us recall Joseph Goebbels, who is revered by the vladimir putin: “A lie must be so blasphemous that no one even thinks it is a lie”.

Why did the russian power choose Ukraine to attack? In the author’s opinion, Ukraine is a concentration of everything unacceptable to Russia: the intellectual level of development, the predominance of human values, the ideology of freedom, developed thinking, the freedom of choice of lifestyle and religion, economic potential, fertile land, working population. At present the goal of aggressive russian policy is to remove Ukraine, which interferes with the dictates of the invader, out of the way. Ukraine has become a battlefield of giants: democracy versus autocracy, good versus evil. The political toolkit of modern Russia is divided and conquered.

The propaganda of russian theories is focused on the role in history

russia is mainly focused on issues, slanders related to Ukraine. The most common of them are as follows:

1. Ukraine is to be blamed for the USSR collapse, it must pay the price for it.
2. Ukraine’s geopolitical independence poses a threat to russia. To justify its intervention, the hostile propaganda machine “russia of Today” spreads the nonsense that Ukraine “is a geopolitical anomaly.” Russia will not be able to revitalise itself as a great power without Ukraine. Russia will not happen without Ukraine. Zbigniew Brzeziński has made a famous observation to the extent that “without Ukraine, russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine assumed and then subordinated, russia automatically becomes an empire”. 

The invasion displaced multiple higher education institutions. The active struggle against Ukrainians was started after the failure of the attempt to capture the Ukrainian territory of Kosa Tuzla Island (2003). To prepare international opinion for similar scenarios, in May 2009, the russian UN representation organised a special briefing against Ukrainians and Ukraine at the United Nations Organisation in New York and so on.

The invasion displaced multiple higher education institutions, forcing the relocation of the universities and colleges in the Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea regions to other parts of the country. Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 has a devastating effect on the Ukrainian scientific community, in particular. Russian shelling damaged 48 higher education institutions, destroying eight entirely. For the scientists and research workers whose institutions russia has not shelled, continuing to carry out research or teach under the regular risk of bombardment, as well as intermittent loss of electricity, heat, and water, has been a significant challenge.

Russian occupant are burning the Ukrainian books. They especially hate textbooks with the history of Ukraine.The British Ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, called the actions of the occupants against books manifestation of Nazism. She accompanied her tweet with a photo of burnt Ukrainian books and the hashtag #RussianAggression.

The russian authorities closed the Ukrainian library, 52,000 books in Moscow in 2017. So the library employees, in particular the director, were arrested and imprisoned. First, the armed police seized some of its books. The director was put on trial for stirring up ethnic hatred.

The Ukrainian film director, Oleg Sentsov, is serving a 20-year-long prison sentence for “terrorist attacks” in Crimea after what Amnesty International called ‘a show trial’.

Liquidation of Ukrainian organisations. The regional structure of the Ukrainians living in the GreyUkraine in the Omsk region was liquidated by the russian court in August 2020. The activities of the World Congress of Ukrainians (SCU) were declared undesirable in the territory of russia in July 2019, etc.

The policy of the russian aggressor is characterised by the devaluation of the individual and human rights. Concentration camps became the most cruel invention of totalitarianism. Staying there is not only physical, but also moral extermination. And now the russian aggressor is throwing Ukrainians into the same concentration camps as hastily organised in the temporarily occupied regions.

First and foremost, russia is finding an enemy. If it is not possible to eliminate the external enemy, then an internal enemy is invented. Paralleled: the Jewish people was the internal enemy of Nazism, and the enemy of russia is not only Ukrainians, but also all citizens of Ukraine. The opponents were labelled “terrorists” and punished accordingly. Such a situation we can observe in today’s practice.

Control over media, education, science. Mass dismissal of journalists, teachers, and university professors who do not share the viewpoint of the Russian power. The TV channel ‘Rain’ was closed, and the representative offices of foreign humanitarian institutions were shut down.

Humiliation of human dignity. Performances of the protest bloc are persecuted and equated with criminal groups. For instance, Sergei Zuyev, the Rector of the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, also known as Shaninka, was taken into custody for questioning in October 2021 as a suspect in a 21 million ruble ($290,000) embezzlement case, the ministry said in a statement. Sergei Zuyev was removed from the post of the Rector of the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences. So, heeded up at an terrible place – the SIZO-1 “Matrosskaya Tishina” prison (Lebedieva 2022). The number of prisoners is growing, the police officers have unlimited power. Stimulating fear of criminals, traitors, and enemies.

European scientists express deep solidarity with Ukraine. The European scientists express their deep solidarity with the people of Ukraine and ask you to sign the petition to stop Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the withdrawal of troops (European Scientists’ Petition Against russia’s Aggression Against Ukraine.17-18 Dec. 2022). Other countries and institutions can help the Ukrainian scientific community overcome the invasion and, in the process, emerge stronger and better prepared to advance sustainable development.

The European Commission launched the European Research Area for Ukraine portal to provide Ukrainian researchers with information and support services. The Horizon Europe and Euratom Research and Training programs offered the Ukrainian scientists free participation until 2023. Clarivate and Elsevier have started providing Ukrainian scientists with free access to databases such as the Web of Science and Scopus. Governments, institutions, and universities in the United States, European Union and other countries (e.g. Brazil, Canada, Israel, Japan, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom) have created support programmes for the Ukrainian scientists that provide accommodation, scholarships, employment, and grants. nclusions

So, the russian leadership, after coming to the presidential seat of v. putin, launched an active campaign to eliminate the civil movement, both ethnically russian and other nations. Cultural societies were banned, literature in the languages of national minorities living in russia was confiscated, relevant publishing houses were liquidated, and mass media were shut down. Opposition to this policy was taking place throughout russia.The British journalist Lawrence Britt, having studied the experience of seven fascist regimes, from Hitler to Pinochet, formulated their common features, naming 14 features. The above features of fascism, explored by scholars such as Roger Bourderon, Lawrence Britt, Umberto Eco, Jason Stanley and Timothy Snyder coincide with the characteristics of the russian fascism. At the same time, new characteristics specific to russia are added to racism: economic and intellectual backwardness vis-à-vis Western democracies, low level of education of wide social strata, ideologically zombified society, etc.

Ivan Pavlov, an outstanding scientist and Nobel laureate in the field of physiology and medicine, believed that the source of fascism in russia was the bolshevik coup d’état of 1917, and after it the bolsheviks sowed “not revolution in the cultural world, but fascism with great success” and further: “The characteristic of the russian mind is bleak, and what russia is going through is also extremely bleak”.

The talented English historian Arnold Toynbee, whose concepts regarding the development of humanity and the theory of civilisation are still relevant today, pointed out the similarity of the fascist political regimes of Italy and russia in the first half of the twentieth century.

The American philosopher, Yale University professor Jason Stanley writes about fascism in the book How Fascism Works and his colleague historian Timothy Snyder, the author of the publication On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons of the XX Century, which claim that fascism exists even now, and explain how it arises and how it works. Timothy Snyder draws attention to the global trends in the weakening of democracy and talks about the civil responsibility of all communities for the current historical processes. A famous writer, the author of the famous novel The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco in the essay Ur- Fascism also names all characteristics of fascism, tells us and warns all people about this danger.

And today russian policy fully corresponds to German Nazism of the World War II: because it destroys civilisations and people, it implements Holocaust and Genocide. The russia’s goal is the destruction of Ukraine and Ukrainians: as ordered by the russian president and approved by the State Duma of the Russian Federation, to carry out “denazification” of Ukraine, evict the Ukrainian population, settle with russians, and send Ukrainians to remote regions of the Far North. The russians are already implementing this plan – they have deported more than 26,000 Ukrainian citizens to remote regions of russia.

The international community supported Ukraine. Actions were brought into the International Criminal Court against russia for anti-Ukrainian crimes and genocide against the Ukrainian people.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant; for russian president vladimir putin for stealing children from the territory of Ukraine. The International Criminal Court believes that putin allegedly bears responsibility for the war crime of illegal deportation of the population (children) and illegal transfer of the population (children) from the occupied territories of Ukraine to the russian federation. According to the indictment, these crimes have been committedon the occupied territory of Ukraine since at least 24 February 2022. There are reasonable grounds to believe that putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the above-mentioned crimes.

The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked the ICC for its ‘historic’ decision and said: ‘In the criminal proceedings investigated by our law enforcement officers, more than 16,000 forced deportations of the Ukrainian children by the occupant have already been recorded. But the real, full number of deportees may be much higher,” he said. “This type of criminal operation would have been impossible without the order of the highest leader of the terrorist state.”

In the conditions of the rapid escalation of military actions, our state is forced to look for means of resistance and protection, to implement mechanisms for punishing the aggressor. This is the introduction of sanctions. This is an appeal to the International Court of Justice. This is the participation of all global transregional and subregional security structures, including NATO, in the protection of peace.