Russia has named Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky on their wanted list, Russian state media reported on Saturday, citing the Interior Ministry database.
Since Saturday afternoon, both Zelenskyj and his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, is on the list of people wanted for unspecified crimes. Russian officials did not immediately clarify the allegations against Zelensky and Poroshenko, and the independent Russian news agency Mediazona claimed on Saturday that the two had been on the list for months.
In an online statement published the same day, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry dismissed reports of Zelensky’s inclusion as evidence of “the desperation of the Russian state machinery and propaganda.”
Numerous officials and lawmakers from Ukraine and NATO countries are also on Russia’s wanted list. Among them is Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of NATO and EU member Estonia, who has vehemently pushed for more military aid to Kiev and tougher sanctions against Moscow.
Russian officials said in February that Kallas was wanted over Tallinn’s efforts to remove Soviet-era monuments to Red Army soldiers in the Baltic country, a belated cleansing of what many see as symbols of past oppression.
NATO member states Latvia, Lithuania and Poland have also torn down monuments that are widely seen as an unwanted legacy of the Soviet occupation of those countries.
Russia has laws criminalizing the “rehabilitation of Nazism” and criminalizing the “desecration” of war memorials.
Also on Russia’s list are ministers from Estonia and Lithuania, as well as the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who prepared an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges last year. Moscow has also charged Ukraine’s military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov over alleged “terrorist” activities, including Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian infrastructure.
The Kremlin has repeatedly tried to link Ukraine’s leadership to Nazism, despite the country having a democratically elected Jewish president who lost relatives in the Holocaust, and despite many Ukrainians’ goal of strengthening the country’s democracy Reduce corruption and move closer to the West.
Moscow cited Ukraine’s “denazification, demilitarization and neutral status” as the main goals of a so-called “special military operation” against its southern neighbor. The claim of “denazification” refers to Russia’s false claims that Ukraine’s government is heavily influenced by radical nationalist and neo-Nazi groups – a claim derided by Kiev and its Western allies.
The Holocaust, World War II and Nazism were important tools for Putin in his attempt to legitimize Russia’s war in Ukraine. World War II, in which the Soviet Union lost an estimated 27 million people, is a lynchpin of Russia’s national identity, and officials are reluctant to challenge any question of the USSR’s role.
Some historians say this coincides with Russia’s attempt to reconstruct certain historical truths from the war. They say Russia sought to emphasize the Soviet Union’s role in defeating the Nazis while downplaying any involvement of Soviet citizens in the persecution of Jews, as well as allegations of crimes by Red Army soldiers against civilians in Eastern Europe.