Russia Reheats Old Propaganda Talking Points in New Wave of Anti-Ukraine Messaging

Russia has intensified anti-Ukraine propaganda with Putin equating Ukraine to Nazi Germany, blaming NATO, and showcasing nuclear missiles. The campaign includes Christian persecution claims, propaganda leaflets, and a Tucker Carlson interview attacking Zelensky personally. When Ukrainian drones set a big gas processing plant in Astrakhan on fire, the governor said everything was fine. Make us preferred on Google Flip Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Laotian President at the Kremlin in Moscow on May 9, 2026. (Photo by Ramil Sitdikov / POOL / AFP) Content Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Flip Make us preferred on Google Russian officials and state propaganda have doubled down on anti-Ukraine messaging in recent weeks, with some content dredging up old false narratives not used in years and discredited at home and abroad. The Kremlin’s sometimes-obsessive May 9 celebration of Allied victory in the European theater during World War II, with President Vladimir Putin portrayed as Russia’s decisive, wartime leader, was the keystone of the campaign. Practically all state media broadcast his Red Square speech, directly linking Hitlerian Germany with democratic Ukraine. Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official . NATO is directly responsible for the Russo-Ukraine War, Kyiv and its Western allies are evil enemies of Holy Russia, and since right is on Russia’s side, Russia’s adversaries will be defeated, Putin said. “They promised NATO would not expand eastward after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, but then tried to draw Ukraine into the European Union’s orbit,” the Russian leader said. “Russia is confronting an aggressive force armed and supported by the entire NATO bloc.” Putin’s NATO-blaming Red Square rhetoric contrasted sharply with his and other Russian officials’ statements about ending the now more-than-four-year-old Russo-Ukraine War that have played up detente with NATO’s most powerful member – the United States – as a way of forcing Kyiv to sign a peace treaty with Moscow on Russian terms. Other Topics of Interest Russia Launches Massive Combined Air Assault Using New Shahed Drone Tactics, Kills Civilians Russia launched a prolonged combined air attack against Ukraine on Wednesday using a new Shahed drone tactic aimed at overwhelming Ukrainian air defenses, according to Ukrainian officials. Military intelligence warned Moscow could later deploy cruise and ballistic missiles targeting critical infrastructure and major cities. Officials also reported civilian casualties and damage across multiple regions, including Rivne, Odesa, Kharkiv, and Poltava. The next day, in an interview with Moscow reporters broadcast nationwide, Putin doubled down on the theme that Russia is at war with NATO and that Russia will win: “I firmly believe our cause is just…victory has always been and will always be ours.” Nuclear saber-rattling – a Kremlin pressure tactic dating back to the Cold War but somewhat tarnished in recent years because of poor battlefield performance by Russia’s much-touted Oreshnik missile against targets in Ukraine – was dusted off and redeployed on Tuesday in state-managed content profiling Putin as the supreme commander of unstoppable military might. Russia’s national RT-1 television channel and practically all other Moscow-controlled outlets led the news with a televised meeting between Putin and Sergei Karakayev, Russian Federation Strategic Missile Forces commander. Karakayev “reported” his troops had just conducted a successful test launch of Russia’s most advanced ICBM, called Sarmat, from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk region, with the missile successfully striking its target at the Kura test range on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Video showed a missile whooshing skyward in a cloud of brown smoke. “Mr Karakayev, congratulations, I wish you further success,” Putin said. “This is the most powerful missile in the world… The total yield of the warheads delivered is more than four times greater than that of any existing most powerful Western analogue.” The English-language X feed for the state-controlled Russian information platform RT informed international news consumers, not sparing the caps: “200+ TON Sarmat missile ERUPTS into sky in massive fiery blast. Russia’s beast ICBM launches with an unmatched 35,000 KM range. Multiple warheads screaming at HYPERSONIC speeds.” In the lead-up to the “Victory Day” events, Russian state messengers mobilized in what amounted to a full-court, cross-spectrum information press advancing the narrative that all-powerful Russia is at war with a criminal Ukrainian state that oppresses its own people. On April 22, at an Easter reception at a Russian Orthodox Church edifice in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put forward to worshipers and media the argument that Ukraine’s government persecutes Christians and at times kills them, which has obliged Russia to intervene to “protect” them.“One of the goals [for Russia in Ukraine] is to protect the honor and dignity of our people, our compatriots, including their right to speak their native [Russian] language [and] to profess their faith,” Lavrov said. “The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been persecuted for over a decade now, which included taking over churches, vandal attacks, harassing the clergy and parishioners.” Ukraine’s wartime government has, in fact, cracked down on a few Russian Orthodox Church leaders for preaching in its Ukrainian churches that the faithful should fight against Ukraine and for Russia, and in even rarer cases, prosecuted Russian Orthodox priests for working as agents for Russian secret services. In general, worship in Ukraine is free and unfettered. On the battlefront, in early May, some Russian Shahed drones – normally weapons carrying sufficient explosives to demolish an apartment and kill everyone inside – flew into Ukrainian airspace to drop propaganda leaflets calling on finders to “jointly celebrate” defeating Nazi Germany and to resist “criminal government” in Kyiv. Drops were reported in Ukraine’s Sumy, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia regions. Some flyers were printed to resemble a Ukrainian hryvna bank note. Others carried a QR code linking a user to a Russian propaganda site. A printed appeal on one note read (in Russian): “Our grandfathers stood side by side in the trenches. History drove us apart. But Victory Day is a memory that cannot be divided.” On May 6, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, warned that the Kremlin had obtained “reliable intelligence” that Ukraine’s military was planning to fly drones to attack the May 9 parade, and added her voice to the party line that Ukraine’s national leadership is evil and so are its friends. “Given the terrorist essence of the Kyiv regime and the crimes committed by the Kyiv regime, we call on foreign diplomatic missions and international organizations to take measures,” Zakharova warned. “We stress that Western states that continue to support the Kiev regime are at least politically complicit in its criminal plans.” The parade went off without visible Ukrainian interference. Two days later, the Moscow-friendly US content creator Tucker Carlson published a one-on-one video interview with Julia Mendel, a former Zelensky press secretary quitting that job some six months before Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine. Mendel told Carlson (in good English) that Zelensky is deeply authoritarian and at times mentally deficient. “Zelensky is a dictator and paranoid,” Mendel claimed. She went on to detail to Carlson a second-hand account of Zelensky telling his public outreach team to lie to the Ukrainian public and instructing his media managers to develop messaging about his presidency using the same tactics as Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. She offered no evidence. Russian media widely rebroadcast excerpts of the Carlson-Mendel interview and reported that their claims were accurate. Ukrainian media suggested both were paid by the Kremlin to create the content. Parallel with the Carslon-Mendel interview, on May 12, the platform RT aired comments by Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev, Moscow’s lead peace negotiator with the Trump administration, headlined “Talks with Russia ‘inevitable’ for Europe.” His message was that the US and Russia are natural allies who want peace, and that it is Europe that wants war in Ukraine. “Russia has long warned that the EU and UK have systematically worked to sabotage US efforts to settle the Ukraine conflict, while emboldening Kiev with continued military support. Moscow has stressed that it views a diplomatic settlement as preferable, but will push towards its goals by military means while Kiev refuses to compromise,” Dmitriev told RT. Both Dmitriev’s and Mendel’s comments went public on Tuesday, the last day of a three-day partial ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. On Wednesday, both sides returned to ground combat across the fighting front and long-range strikes. One of the most effective by Ukraine was a drone raid flying to the shores of the Caspian Sea to hit and set ablaze a Gazprom natural gas processing plant in the Volga River port city of Astrakhan. Open-source video and Ukrainian after-battle reports documented weak anti-aircraft fire, multiple explosions and billowing fires. The senior Russian official in Astrakhan, Governor Igor Babushkin, saw the Ukrainian attack differently. “All enemy aircraft were either shot down or neutralized by electronic warfare systems. The debris caused a small fire,” Babushkin said. Stefan Korshak is the Kyiv Post Senior Defense Correspondent. He is from Houston Texas, is a Yalie and since the mid-1990s has worked as correspondent/photographer for newswire, newspapers, television and radio. He has reported from five wars but most enjoys doing articles on wildlife and nature. You can read his weekly blog on the Russo-Ukraine War on Facebook, Substack and Medium. His new book on the 2022 Siege of Mariupol is available on Amazon UK and Amazon US .