How Fascist Is Putinism?

The concept of generic fascism helps understanding Russia’s war against Ukraine

Andreas Umland

The use of the term “fascism” in connection with the modern Russian state and its actions has at least three dimensions. First, it is a historical analogy used to guide public interpretation of current events in light of well-known developments in the recent past. Second, it is a Ukrainian code expressing the lived experience of millions of Ukrainians today. Third, “fascism” is an academic umbrella term that serves scientific classification, enables comparisons across time and space, and highlights differences and similarities between historical fascism, on the one hand, and Putinism, today on the other.

Fascism as a historical analogy

Most public references to Putin’s regime as fascist serve as a diachronic analogy or metaphorical classification to better understand recent developments in Russia and its occupied territories. Such historical comparisons and verbal visualizations of current phenomena with events and images from the past help to identify key characteristics and challenges of today’s Russia. The attribution of “fascism” to Putin’s regime serves to illustrate to the general public what is happening in Russia and the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.

This comparison is justified insofar as there are numerous parallels between the political rhetoric and actions of Putin’s Russia, on the one hand, and Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, on the other. By mid-2025, many political, social, ideological, and institutional similarities will have accumulated. These range from increasingly dictatorial and partly totalitarian features of the Russian regime to revanchist and increasingly genocidal features in the Kremlin’s external behavior. Against this backdrop, the use of the term fascism serves to guide debates in mass media, civil society, and educational institutions.

 

Fascism as lived experience

The use of the term “fascism” to describe Putin’s regime by outside commentators aims to give audiences outside Russia and Ukraine an impression of current Russian domestic and foreign affairs. In contrast, the Ukrainian use of the term “fascism” and the neologism “rashism” – a combination of “Russia” and “fascism” – is primarily an expressive act. In Ukraine, describing Russia as fascist has, since 2014, articulated the collective shock, deep grief, and ongoing despair at the Kremlin’s morbid cynicism toward ordinary Ukrainians—especially in the last three and a half years of war.

“Fascism” or “rashism” also serves as a battle cry for the Ukrainian government and society to mobilize domestic and foreign support for resistance against Russian aggression. These terms are intended to draw the outside world’s attention to the serious consequences of Russia’s war of expansion and destruction for Ukraine. The adjectives “fascist” and “rashist” indicate that Russia’s military expansion is not just about conquering Ukrainian territory. Russia’s revanchist adventure, especially since 2022, aims to destroy Ukraine as an independent nation-state and a cultural community separate from Russia.

The words and deeds of the Russian government are largely consistent in this regard. Statements by Russian government officials, parliamentarians, and propagandists, especially since February 24, 2022, indicate that Russia’s intentions toward Ukraine go beyond merely redrawing state borders, restoring regional hegemony, and preventing the Westernization of Eastern Europe. Moscow has already since 2014 been ruthlessly suppressing Ukrainian identity, culture, and national sentiment in Crimea and the Donbas.

It would be going too far to equate Russian Ukrainophobia with the biological and eliminatory anti-Semitism of the Nazis. With its irredentist war, Moscow “only” wants to destroy the Ukrainians as a self-confident nation and integrated civil society. The Kremlin does not aim to physically eliminate all Ukrainians, as the Nazis attempted to do with the Jews. Nevertheless, the Russian agenda goes beyond “mere” expulsion, harassment, deportation, re-education, and brainwashing of Ukraine’s inhabitants. It also includes the expropriation, terrorization, imprisonment, torture, and murder of those Ukrainians (as well as some Russians) who oppose Russia’s military expansion, political terror, and cultural dominance in Ukraine in word and/or deed. It is therefore hardly surprising that many Ukrainians, as well as some Russian observers, spontaneously describe Russia’s genocidal behavior as “fascist.”

Fascism as a scholarly concept

A growing number of prominent experts on Central and Eastern Europe today describe Putin’s Russia as fascist. In contrast, many contemporary historians and political scientists who work with comparative methods have so far avoided using the term fascism to categorize Putinism. This has to do with the narrow definitions of generic fascism used by many of these academics. According to these definitions, the key feature that distinguishes fascists from other right-wing extremists is their goal of political, social, cultural, and anthropological rebirth.

Fascists often refer to a supposed Golden Age in their nation’s distant past and use ideas and symbols from this mythologized prehistory. However, they do not want to preserve or restore a past era, but rather to create a new kind of national community. Fascists are right-wing extremists, but they are more revolutionary than ultra-conservative or reactionary. Today, many comparativists would be cautious about applying the term fascism to Putinism, as Putin seeks to restore the Russian Empire rather than create an entirely new Russian state and people.

Admittedly, Putin’s transformation of Russian domestic and foreign policy over the past 25 years has had a clear direction. It has meant a continued increase in rhetorical aggression, internal repression, external escalation, and general radicalization, which now culminates in monthly Russian threats of world war. For most comparative historians, nevertheless, these and similar changes in the last quarter-century of Russian history would still be insufficient to classify Putinism as fascism.

Ukraine as Russia’s interior

On the other hand, Russia’s policy in the occupied Ukrainian territories could be classified as quasi-fascist in a more direct sense. The ruthless Russification campaign that the Russian state is carrying out in the annexed parts of Ukraine through targeted terror, forced re-education, and material incentives aims to achieve a profound sociocultural transformation of these areas. Admittedly, such irredentist, colonizing, and homogenizing policies are not seen as necessarily fascist in comparative imperialism studies. However, the instruments used by the Kremlin to implement its Ukraine policy and the desired outcomes are in some respects similar to those of the fascist revolutions attempted by Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany.

Moscow wants to fundamentally reshape the conquered Ukrainian municipalities and turn them into cells of a culturally and ideologically standardized Russian people (russkii narod). Russian imperial ultra-nationalists regard most parts of Ukraine as originally Russian territory and refer to them as “New Russia” and “Little Russia” (Novorossiya, Malaya Rossiya). Ukrainians – insofar as the term is accepted at all – are thus merely a sub-ethnic group of the greater pan-Russian people, whose Ukrainian language is merely a Russian dialect and who have regional folklore rather than a national culture.

According to the Russian irredentist narrative, the western Russian border dwellers were misled by anti-Russian forces in order to form an artificial nation, “the Ukrainians.” Foreign actors such as the Catholic Church, imperial Germany, the Bolsheviks, and/or the West today have divided the larger pan-Russian people. They have alienated the “Great Russians” (velikorossy) of the Russian Federation from the “Little Russians” (malorossy) of Ukraine.

Moscow’s occupation policy in Ukraine, aimed at reversing this supposedly artificial division of Russian civilization allegedly caused by foreign powers, could be understood as an attempt to give new birth to “Little Russia.” The Kremlin’s goal is to bring about a local political, social, cultural, and anthropological revolution in the Ukrainian territories annexed by Russia. The Russification policy in Ukraine is thus sufficiently similar to classic fascist domestic and occupation policies, so that Moscow’s transformative goals and actions with regard to Russia’s Ukrainian “brothers” could be classified as, at least, quasi-fascist.

Dr. Andreas Umland is an analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS) in the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI).

This article is the summary of larger chapter forthcoming in: Ian Garner and Taras Kuzio, eds., Russia and Modern Fascism: New Perspectives on the Kremlin’s War Against Ukraine. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2025.

Source: https://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2025/07/22/how-fascist-is-putinism/