Vladimir Putin loves Nazis

Russian President Putin claims he invaded Ukraine to "stop the Nazis," when the actual Nazis were in Russia, being protected by Putin himself.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claims he simply had to invade Ukraine because the country was overrun by Nazis!

In fact, Ukraine is governed by a Jewish comedian whose grandfather fought in the Soviet Army against the Nazis (the same grandfather lost 3 brothers in the Holocaust).

But more importantly, Russia is the country run by a Nazi sympathizer, and his name is Vladimir Putin.

It all goes back around ten years, when, as part of his campaign to Make Russia Great Again, Putin ratcheted up the official harassment of gay, bisexual and transgender Russians. Putin codified the bigotry in the 2013 “Gay Propaganda Law,” that “prohibited the distribution of ‘propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships’ among minors.” While Putin claimed the law was meant to “protect children,” it potentially applied to anyone, anywhere, who said anything at all positive about LGBT people.

Which takes us back to Nazis.

You see, Putin, ever the master spy, didn’t just target Russia’s LGBT community directly, he also relied on a burgeoning network of Russian neo-Nazis, who would kidnap gay and trans Russians — some as young as 13 — torture them on camera, then post the videos on YouTube and Russia’s version of Facebook, VK, a company that claimed the torture videos didn’t violate its terms of service (we have proof of that too).

One of the gay victims being beaten and kidnapped by a Russian neo-Nazi gang.

The videos were prolific, and hideous. The terrorists, knowing they would face no criminal sanction, showed their full faces to the camera during the “interrogations,” and even felt comfortable revealing their names. Their ringleader was Maxim Martsinkevich, who went by the name Tesak — he’s dead now, killed in prison after the Russians finally went after him on an unrelated charge, but only after Britain’s Channel 4 reported on the problem and embarrassed Putin.

Below is a still shot of a video of Martsinkevich torturing a young Ukrainian TV star back in 2013. The young man’s head was shaved, a rainbow flag painted on his scalp, Stars of David written on his body, was forced to lick a sex toy, then “dance” with another young man similarly defiled. All on camera, all published online.

Martsinkevich and his cohorts were also virulent racists and antisemites. Here’s an antisemitic social media post the group’s Moscow branch posted at the time. It reads, “I’m not Jewish, I just have greedy bones.”

Martsinkevich’s gang would also kidnap African students studying in Russia, simply because they were Black. The stripped one such student and shoved a watermelon in his face, on camera.

The Russian neo-Nazis would post publicly on VK, advertising for accomplices to their kidnappings and locations in which they might film the interrogations. And all the while, having all of this information at their disposal, Putin’s government didn’t just refuse to arrest the neo-Nazis — they were actual neo-Nazis who publicly worshipped Hitler — Putin’s government denied the kidnappings were taking place at all, claiming, incredibly, that there was no evidence of the 1,500 or so crimes already documented by advocates.

Social media post from Ekaterina Zigunova, one of the anti-LGBT neo-Nazi leaders.

And there was evidence. I still have much of it. There were dozens of videos and photos of Russian and Ukrainian LGBT people tortured by these thugs. And time after time, the perpetrators were happy to publicly identify themselves by face and name because they knew they had Putin’s tacit approval.

This young gay man was kidnapped by Russian neo-Nazis, and forced to drink urine on camera.

The head of the neo-Nazi’s St. Petersburg group was Ekaterina Zigunova, who went by Katya. Here’s Katya and her gang with a young gay man they kidnapped, and were holding hostage while recording him. It’s a screen shot of a much longer video:

Russian neo-Nazi Ekaterina Zigunova interrogated a kidnapped gay man.

As always, Zigunova was happy to show her face in the abduction videos. She even posted videos of her kidnapping planning meetings (via that link, you’ll see clear face shots of multiple admitted kidnappers who the Russian government refused to prosecute). And she was happy to post pro-Nazi images online, in a country that really doesn’t like Nazis. Putin refused to lift a finger to stop her, and it’s still not clear if she ever paid a price for her crimes.

Russian neo-Nazis Ekaterina Zigunova.

This is the last image I’ll show — I have dozens more. This 15-year-old boy was lured with a promise of money for sex. Martsinkevich’s group abducted him, interrogated him on camera, then outed him to his father after the boy told his captors that his dad would beat him if he found out his son was gay.

Russian neo-Nazis terrorizing a 15 y.o. boy for being gay.

Vladimir Putin didn’t invade Ukraine to stop Nazis. Vladimir Putin loves Nazis. What Vladimir Putin doesn’t like is a free and democratic Ukraine on his border, shining a light on the fact that slavs can have freedom too.

JOHN