It was self defense. Because Nazis. Not making it up. Just going deeper down the rabbit hole that is Putin's mind.
NPR's Rachel Martin talks to Russia military expert Jeffrey Edmonds, who formerly served as the director for Russia at the National Security Council, about the country's military capabilities.
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Putin describes the attack on Ukraine as an act of self-defense
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Let's turn now to Jeffrey Edmonds, whose research focuses on the Russian military. He was director for Russia at the National Security Council in 2017. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
JEFFREY EDMONDS: Thank you for having me.
MARTIN: Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, is calling this an act of self-defense. How can he justify that?
EDMONDS: I think - there are so many different false flag operations in the east. I mean, it's really quite remarkable that almost everything we were seeing in the east leading up until yesterday were completely fabricated events. And so there really is no justification given the size of the military operation and the fact that he's practically invading half the country at this point.
MARTIN: He's talking about denazification. What does that mean in this context?
EDMONDS: The Russian leadership have often used references to Nazi forces as a way of demonizing whoever it is they're targeting, whether that's through information against the Baltic states or what have you. And so this is just kind of a common phrase used by him to really kind of demonize elements of the Ukrainian population and provide even more false justification for what he's doing.
MARTIN: And the Russians accept that, the larger Russian population.
EDMONDS: It's hard to say. I mean, there's - you know, they're saying that everybody in Russia lost somebody to the Nazis. And so the - World War II is much more present, I would say, in their minds than, for example, in the United States of each common person. And so it may resonate some. I don't think that large portions of the population actually believe that denazification is something that needs to happen to Ukraine.