MOSCOW, April 19. /TASS/. US tech companies are helping Kiev spread information from Ukrainian extremist organizations on the Internet, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a report on Wednesday.
The ministry stated in the report on human rights in Ukraine that, as Russia is conducting a special military operation to de-Nazify and demilitarize Ukraine, Western news media are exhibiting "an increasingly distinct trend to whitewash Ukrainian nationalists, who are portrayed as fighters for the freedom and independence of a "democratic" country, fighting against the "aggression of a dictatorship."
"US IT companies provide noticeable support to Kiev. YouTube administrators and moderators are known to have no qualms about disseminating information from extremist organizations, most notably the Right Sector and Azov, which are banned in Russia. YouTube has essentially become one of the key platforms for spreading false information about the special military operation in Ukraine and slandering the armed forces of the Russian Federation," the ministry said.
The ministry said Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups have established contact with similar groups in European and American countries.
"Nationalists from abroad regularly come to Ukraine, where they undergo training in Ukrainian nationalist formations and at combat positions of the Ukrainian military in Donbass," the ministry said.
Western "aid" to Kiev
The Russian Foreign Ministry said some international Internet sites help conceal information that "testifies to the crimes of the Kiev regime" from the public.
"In December 2022, it became known that the English-language website of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia deleted an article in English about the Alley of Angels memorial that had been erected in Donetsk in memory of children that died in shelling by the armed forces of Ukraine. So far, there are materials about the Alley of Angels in Russian, Ukrainian and six other languages. However, the news media noticed some information there is false," the ministry said.
It also stated that there are Western media reports that reveal "the Nazi essence of the right-wing radical groups in Ukraine that are cast as ‘independence fighters.’"
"At the same time, special attention in such works is drawn to the fact that before the start of the Russian special military operation, many Western media outlets pointed to the Nazi component of radical Ukrainian formations and their glorification of Nazi accomplices Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych. However, after February 2022, this opinion is being painstakingly removed from the Western public domain. Meanwhile, it has been rightly noted in the above-mentioned articles that the explanation by the Russian leadership about why the special military operation was launched largely coincides with what was previously published in unbiased articles by Western journalists who acknowledged the presence of neo-Nazism in Ukraine," the ministry said.