Putin claims one of his intentions is to 'De-nazify' Ukraine. And the Russians have not forgotten that some Ukrainians fought against them during World War 2. However, do not forget the Holodomor of 1932 to 1933 - mass starvation which affected the major grain-producing areas of Ukraine, millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine.

This was a deliberate policy by Stalin.

Since 2006, the Holodomor has been recognized by Ukraine and 15 other countries as a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet government.

When Germany invaded Ukraine in 1941 they were initially welcomed as liberators from Stalin's totalitarian regime. This attitude changed, however, when the Germans began treating the Ukrainians as 'sub-human Slavs' in accordance with the ideology of the German state at that time. Some historians argue that this was a missed opportunity for a German regime blinded by ideology.

In the occupied Western parts of the Ukraine anti-Soviet feeling led to collaboration with the occupying power (the issue of collaboration, in general, is a difficult topic, however).

There was a Ukrainian SS Division, 14th Waffen Grenadier Division(1st Galician) and many 1,000's of Ukrainians served in various German police and security forces. About 80,000 Ukrainians served in the SS Division during the war.

However, 4.5 million Ukrainians volunteered for the Red Army to fight the Germans and many hundreds of thousands joined the partisans and waged a guerrilla war against the Germans.

It is unfair to tar a whole population with the same brush. Remember, there were also SS units from:

Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Bohemia and Moravia, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, India, Italy, Latvia, The Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Soviet Union (Russia), Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, and even the United Kingdom (The British Free Corps, although it was a small number - at no time did it reach more than 27 men in strength.)

Plus, of course, active collaboration in other ways. In any population, there would always be a small proportion willing to fight for the enemy ... even today. But that doesn't mean that the entire population should be regarded as willing to do so.

Who knows what one would have done if their country was occupied? And resistance movements were slow to start up. In fact, they began to grow in size only when it was becoming apparent that Germany was going to lose, from 1943. The only country that resisted violently from the first day of occupation was Greece. Notice that there are no Greek or Polish SS units.