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July 18, 2026
Saturday 18 July 2026
Thomas Henry
The Australian
Moscow has accused Australian troops of engaging in hate speech, after ADF soldiers shed light on training camps set up by a coalition of allied nations to increase the lethality of Ukrainian forces fighting Russian troops.
Just days after The Australian reported on the more than 40 Australian soldiers deployed to Camp Jomsborg in Poland to train Ukrainian forces, and their calls for additional resources, the Kremlin’s representatives in Australia decried a “spread of hate speech against Russians”.
The Russian embassy issued a statement on Friday branding Ukraine as a “neo-Nazi regime”, and accused ADF personnel of directing hate speech at an “entire ethnic group”.
“They describe their objective as making their trainees ‘better at killing Russians’ or ‘best skilled in killing Russians’. This murderous narrative, binding together the two words “kill” and “Russians”, is spread as something positive by irresponsible journalists,” the statement reads.
“We would like to remind all supporters of the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime and trainers of its troops that the Ukrainian army widely uses foreign assistance and skills it receives to murder Russian civilians.”
Detailing the operation of the training camp designed to give Ukrainian squad and platoon leaders skills to improve the lethality of their forces, an Australian soldier said “we teach squad leaders to adapt faster than the Russians to make informed, well-planned decisions executed with violence and precision”.
“We change and adapt the training on the fly as we get real-time intelligence about what is happening on the frontline; the Ukrainians are here to be better at killing Russians – it’s raw, but it’s the reality,” they said.
The statement also took aim at opposition defence spokesman James Paterson who threw his support behind efforts to support Ukraine in it’s war against Russia, claiming he had “enshrined” hate speech in political circles.
“If I was representing the Russian Federation I’d be much more worried about the inevitable war crimes tribunal after the conflict is over than so-called ‘hate speech’ in Australia,” Senator Paterson told The Australian.
“If Putin and his representatives want Australians to stop training Ukrainian soldiers, they should cease their illegal and unjust invasion of their sovereign neighbour. Until they do, Australia must do everything we can to assist.”
It’s understood pro-Kremlin Australian activist Simeon Boikov has been spreading the article on pro-Putin Telegram channels.