NIZHNIY TAGIL /Sverdlovsk Region/, Feb 16, 2024 (BSS/TASS) - There is no sympathy for Nazis in Russia and there will be none, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a conversation with factory workers while visiting the heavy industry giant Uralvagonzavod.

"There has never been any sympathy for Nazis in Russia. Nor will there be any," he said.

Putin noted that anti-Russian-minded politicians in Ukraine grabbed power after the collapse of the Soviet Union "because they behaved brazenly and had support from abroad, primarily from the United States, of course."

"Well, that's the reason why everything happened the way it did. Those who once collaborated with the Nazis and remained in those positions are now doing the same," he stated.

The Russian leader explained why Bandera, Shukhevich and other similar personalities were being glorified in Ukraine.

"It is being said that allegedly they worked and collaborated with fascists, with Nazis, with Hitler and with Hitlerites, because their real aim was the independence of Ukraine. Then the Nazis started persecuting them," Putin said. "They began to be persecuted not because they abandoned their views, but because they decided to go where the wind blows, they realized that Germany was losing the war. So they began to try to establish relations with the allies in the West," he added, noting that "the Germans immediately saw that sent them to the camps."

As Putin explained, this gave rise to the idea that Bandera, Shukhevich and their likes "were not really Nazis at all."

"They are natural Nazis, one hundred percent!" Putin said. These people "started nosing around there, thinking about who else they might lean on - and not because they changed their minds or changed their views," "but because they realized that Nazi Germany was losing the war."

"This says it all. They had been Nazis all along and they remained Nazis. But their offspring - neo-Nazis - are absolutely identical to those we fought during the Great Patriotic War," the Russian leader said.

Putin emphasized that "if today someone speaks from the same positions, already in a broader terms, it is people who betray their fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, those who actually fought Nazism."

"Now they line up according to the current political situation. They find it more beneficial that way. They look at those who are in power," he said, emphasizing that Ukraine was being ruled by those who "by various means, including sophisticated brainwashing of large groups of the population, were planted to take key posts."