> It seems strange that Putin should be claiming he is running an Anti-fascist[0] Special Military Operation when he is channeling (if yet more hypocritically)

> It seems strange that Putin should be claiming he is running an Anti-fascist[0] Special Military Operation when he is channeling (if yet more hypocritically) Hitler himself. That's only strange if you expect honesty from him. Despite everything, fascism still sounds like a massive negative to everybody today, so he appeals to that as justification, regardless of whether there's any basis for it. On top of that, he hopes the memory of the Russian WW2 fight against the Nazis will invigorate the Russian people to support his war. The fact that his war has more in common with Hitler's aggression than with the defense against it is of course an inconvenient fact he wants to ignore, deny, and bury under his war rhetoric.