‘Ordinary Nazism’: Photographs Exhibited at the Victory Museum

The Nazis and their collaborators, the “Hilfspolizei”, formed from the local population and savaged Donbass during the Great Patriotic War. This photo shows mothers saying goodbye to children tortured and killed by the Nazis in September 1943.

After Ukraine became independent, nationalism became an integral part of the policies of the new Ukrainian government. Photo: A column of demonstrators heading towards the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Ukraine, June 1991.

In the winter of 2014, violent clashes between protesters, including nationalists, and Ukrainian security forces broke out on Independence Square, known in Ukrainian as Maidan Nezalezhnosti, in Kiev. Photo: Tents of European integration supporters on Independence Square in Kiev, where clashes between the opposition and police broke out. 18 February 2014.

Ukraine started destroying monuments to Soviet commanders and heroes of the Great Patriotic War. The Ukrainian authorities set themselves the task of erasing everything Soviet and Russian from people's memory. Photo: Nationalists use a rope in an attempt to pull down a bust of Marshal Georgy Zhukov near the Palace of Sports in Kharkov.

Veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA, an extremist organisation banned in Russia) march to a monument to Stepan Bandera on “Heroes' Day” in central Lvov, 2019. Members of the OUN-UPA* became notorious for their atrocities during the Great Patriotic War and are honoured as heroes in modern Ukraine. *The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (or OUN-UPA*) is an extremist organisation banned in Russia since 2014.

Marchers celebrating the 112th anniversary of the birth of Nazi outlaw Stepan Bandera in Kiev. Ukrainian neo-Nazis modelled their torchlight marches after the ones that took place in Hitler's Germany and attended them with their families.

Participants in the “People's Will” rally in Sevastopol, February 2014. Crimea and Donbass didn’t accept Ukraine’s drift towards neo-Nazism.

The opening of a monument to the ideological leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (banned in Russia), Stepan Bandera, in Lvov. An avenue in Kiev was named after this Nazi criminal. In 2010, President Viktor Yushchenko awarded Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine.

Fighters of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion take the oath of allegiance to Ukraine in Sophia Square in Kiev before being sent to Donbass. Members of the Nazi battalion have committed hundreds of war crimes against the population of Donbass over eight years. The Azov flag has an inverted image of the runic symbol “Wolfsangel”, which was used by the Nazis.

Eight years of conflict have left a mark: it will take decades to demine the territory of the republics. Photo: A warning sign at a position near the line of contact with Ukrainian forces near Spartak village in the Donetsk region.

On 2 July 2014, Ukraine launched an airstrike on the village of Stanitsa Luganskaya. That day, 12 people, including children, were killed, with dozens more being wounded.

Ruslan Pykhtin, a seven-year-old boy, in a house near the contact line on the outskirts of Donetsk. A photo from the “Grey Zone” series that won the Grand Prix in the Intarget Photolux Award 2019 photo contest.

Sakhanka is a village in the Novoazovsky district of the Donetsk region, located on the line of contact. More than 1,000 people lived here before the conflict. Now almost everyone has left. The village was often shelled and many houses were destroyed.

A residential building in the Kievsky district of Donetsk after shelling by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Large-calibre shells pierced through the concrete walls.

July 2014. Bodies of bystanders killed by a Ukrainian shell in a street in Lugansk. Any civilian in Donbass could have perished from shrapnel wounds at any time during the past eight years.