Confusingly multiple truths on the Ukraine-Russia War (Includinng Ukrainian Nazis and Russia's war economy)

The Russia-Ukraine War that’s been going on since 2022 has often been a reminder of the banal observation that “multiple things can be true at once.”

It can be true (and is) that the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 by Russia, Ukraine, the UK and the US that committed Ukraine to give up its legacy nuclear weapons included a pledge by the parties to respect Ukraine’s national sovereignty. It can also be true (and is) that there were no mutual defense commitments by the parties in the event that one party did violate Ukraine’s national sovereignty. (1)

It can be true (and is) that when Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and incorporated it into Russia it was violating the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and international law against invading another country. It can also be true (and is) that Crimea was the key base for the Russian Black Sea fleet and Russia considers control of it critical to their national security as they understand it.

Nazis in Ukraine

It can be true (and is) that there are Nazis in Ukraine. It can also be true (and is) that Russian propaganda has grossly exaggerated the influence of Ukrainian Nazis on the current government’s policies and goals.

Marta Havryshko recently provided some current analysis of the “brown” (Nazi) part of the Ukrainian political spectrum. First, the bad news:

Neo-Nazi networks are deeply embedded in parts of Ukraine’s military structure. Their presence is visible in units such as Azov, the Third Assault Brigade, the Russian Volunteer Corps, Bratstvo, the German Volunteer Corps, Karpatska Sich, and others. Yet Ukraine’s Western backers continue to arm, fund, and train these units without meaningful scrutiny.

Even more striking is the normalization of Nazi imagery itself. Official Ukrainian military channels and mainstream media regularly publish images of soldiers wearing swastikas, Waffen-SS insignia, and patches linked to neo-Nazi groups like Combat 18 and Misanthropic Division. This is no longer treated as scandalous. It has been normalized. (2)

She writes that the de-politicization of the Azov unit of the Ukrainian army was over-emphasized in Western reporting to the point of whitewashing the “brown” influence in the Ukrainian forces. While it may be based on a pragmatic consideration, the continuing influence she describes of far-right ideologues in the military is a potentially serious problem for Ukraine’s future.

Some far-right parties and factions in Europe more generally are pro-Russian in their orientation. Ukrainian Nazis tend to be anti-Russian.

Without getting too deeply into these particular toxic weeds, the far-right, authoritarian parties in the EU Parliament – the main democracy-hating Nationalist International parties - are mainly organized into two groups: the Patriots for Europe and the Europe of Sovereign Nations Group.

Overt neo-Nazis are (currently!) much fringier that the more clean-shaven aspiring fascists.

Of course, the turn to [supporting] Russia was not adopted by the entire extreme right. Rather, the war against Ukraine, which has been going on since 2014 and entered a new phase in 2022, led to a marked formation of camps. While pro-Russian positions prevail in the FPÖ [Austrian Freedom Party], in the "alternative media" landscape, in conspiracy-inclined groups and in parts of the "New Right," or at least a strategic equidistance is insisted on, in the neo-Nazi spectrum partisanship for Ukraine on the basis of a racist reading of the conflict and revisionist historical analogies dominates.

Russia appears [to them] as a revenant of the Soviet Union, which - as it had already happened in the Second World War - unleashed the "hordes of Inner and East Asia" to subjugate "Europe and the white world". The Austrian neo-Nazi milieu shares this view with like-minded people in Ukraine itself as well as in other European countries, which is also reflected in corresponding networking activities. On August 24, 2024 - Ukraine's Independence Day - the pan-European alliance "Nation Europe" was founded at a meeting in Lviv in western Ukraine. This sees itself as a networking platform against Russian expansionism and unites organizations from all over Europe. [my emphasis] (3)

So, yes, there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine and Zelenskyy’s government probably is too tolerant of their presence in the military. Neo-Nazis are not running the government.

Is the war overwhelming Russia’s economy?

It can be true that the war is putting real strains on Russia’s economy. It can also be true that Western hopes that Russia’s economic weaknesses will undercut their war effort have been overblown.

Michael Krätke, in a new article on the damage the war is doing to the Russian economy. wrestles with the multiple-things-can-be-true challenge in a recent short (four pages) article on Russia’s wartime economy.

He asserts the claim that seems to be pretty generally accepted that Russia has cut back on the publication of much of its economic data and what they do publish tends to be less than accurate. On the other hand, he cites the Russian Ministry of Development figures reporting that in early 2026 by 0.3 to 0.4 percent. And he notes, “All government forecasts for the coming years claim no more than growth of around one percent.”

He writes that “the prices of basic foodstuffs such as bread, potatoes or cucumbers have more than doubled since December 2025 alone, even according to the Russian statistical office Rosstat.” He doesn’t cite the particular source for that claim, but it’s at least consistent with the price rises that the current Iran War has been causing worldwide.

According to him, the economic burdens of the war have only recently become sharply felt in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

But given the assumption that he shares that Russia’s published economic statistics are bad information, he doesn’t make clear where the numbers he’s citing for his own arguments are provided. Which is probably partially due to space constraints. While the multiple-things-can-be-true-at-the-same-time consideration applies to the economy as well, it’s hard to evaluate them without some ideas of the sources.

In a backhanded acknowledgement that the economic sanctions on Russia failed to have the hoped-for effect on Russia’s ability to continue the war, he writes: “Ukraine's supporters have been just as inconsistent and hesitant about sanctions as they were about supplying weapons to the invaded country.” He argues they were “much too slow and much too soft.“

But in the multiple-things vein, Krätke reports on the stimulative effect since 2022 of what is called military Keynesianism, in which the increase in government funding for military goods stimulates the economy more generally:

Since 2004, the Putin regime has pursued one rearmament program after another, and in 2022 it converted the entire economy to war [priorities]. The country's military-industrial complex has grown almost explosively in the past four years: at the beginning with emergency measures such as maximum utilization of the existing facilities, the reduction of production times or the introduction of a three-shift system with a six-day working week.

Krätke makes an interesting use of the longtime anti-militarist argument that spending on military production inevitably results in at least a relative short-changing of civilian production. As President Dwight Eisenhower put it in his famous 1953 “Chance for Peace” speech: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” (5) Krätke stresses the damage that higher military spending is doing to the Russian economy, in his view.

Without going into greater detail here, military expenditures generally are less stimulative than equivalent amounts of government spending on civilian projects, not least because of the large and poorly-regulated profit margins on major military contracts. But conservatives generally find military-related spending as more virtuous than civilian spending.

However, it is widely accepted that wartime spending booms can stimulate the economy while also causing potentially serious economic imbalances, even if the overall economy is growing at a healthy pace.

Krätke concludes his article with, “Russia’s war economy is hitting up against its limits.”

So here also we have a multiple-things-can-be-true-at-the-same-time situation. It can be true (and is) that wartime military spending can provide relatively quick economic stimulus. It can also be true (and is) that a lopsided emphasis on rapidly building up the military can also cause real economic problems.

And when it comes to economic sanctions more generally, it can be true (and is) that economic sanctions can create important pressure on a country to change its behavior. But it can also be true (and is) that economic sanctions alone cannot reasonably be expected to produce a rapid change in a country’s existing regime or quickly force a concession on a matter the targeted country considers vital to its national interest or survival. Decades of US experience with sanctions on Iraq and Iran provide substantial evidence for that.

And imposing sanctions on a country is often a prelude to war, which the examples of Iraq and Iran also illustrate.

This discussion from half a year ago from British Channel 4 News addresses issues with the Russian war economy. Elina Ribakova in it discusses the limited effectiveness of the sanctions on Russia and Russia’s continuing disadvantages as a petrostate. (6)

Notes:

(1) Ukraine, Nuclear Weapons, and Security Assurances at a Glance. Arms Control Association March 2022. (Accessed: 2026-04-06).

(2) Havryshko, Marta (2026): Ukraine's military has a real Nazi problem. Responsible Statecraft 06/02/2026. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/nazis-in-ukraine-military/> (Accessed: 2026-04-06).

(3) Pflegerl, Phillip & Weidinger, Bernhard (2026): Globalisierter Antiglobalismus: Internationale Beziehungen des österreichischen Rechtsextremismus, 386. In: Handbuch Rechtsextremismus in Österreich. Vienna: Falter Verlag. My translation to English.

(4) Krätke, Michael (2026): Putins Kriegswirtschaft: Propaganda und Realität. Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 6/2026, 9-12.

(5) Address "The Chance for Peace" Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors. 04/16/2026. The American Presidency Project. <https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-chance-for-peace-delivered-before-the-american-society-newspaper-editors> (Accessed: 2026-04-06).

(6) Booming or breaking? The truth about Russia’s war economy. Channel 4 News YouTube channel 11/27/2025. <https://youtu.be/qg5PWLfvlJw?si=KQV8YqWs6cfhJFNu> (Accessed: 2026-04-06).