"How can Russians think that Ukrainians are Nazis?", some ask. "Doesn't Ukraine have a democratically-elected Jewish president?"

Let's just say that the standard definition of Nazis differs from the Russian one. While we think of Nazis as murderers of six million Jews, that really does not come into play as far as Russia is concerned. Sure, Jews were killed in World War II, but it's really the Russian people who suffered greatest. The Holocaust is just a footnote. We wish we were kidding.

It was always like this. All the way back in 1944, Soviet Jewish writers Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman compiled "The Black Book of Soviet Jewry", detailing the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust, as well as Jewish roles as resistance fighters. It contained hundreds of first-hand accounts, letters, diaries, essays, and documents. The book was published in 1946... in America. It didn't see the light of day in the USSR because it didn't emphasize Russian deaths, only Jewish ones.

This is not to underscore the toll that World War II took on the Russian people (with Stalin's comment that Soviet mothers will just make more children continuing to ring true in Putin's age). This is simply to explain that to an average Russian, the Holocaust doesn't come into play.

As for that other part of that statement, "democratically-elected"... Most Russians don't believe that either.