President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed the law “On the Fundamentals of State Policy of National Memory of the Ukrainian People” on August 29, 2025.
As informed by Deputy Head of the President’s Office Iryna Vereshchuk, this law represents a “fundamental law on the protection and development of [Ukrainian] national identity,” which previous presidents of the country were unable to sign.
The law was approved by the Verkhovna Rada on August 21. According to information published in the Ukrainian “Judicial-Legal Newspaper,” this document introduces for the first time at the state level such important concepts as “war for Ukraine’s independence,” “historical anti-Ukrainian propaganda,” and “crimes against the Ukrainian people.”
The term “rashism” is also defined, characterized as “a type of totalitarian ideology and practices underlying the Russian Nazi state regime, formed in the aggressor country, and based on the traditions of Russian chauvinism and imperialism, as well as on the practices of communist and national-socialist regimes.”
The word “rashism” began to be used no later than 2008, during the Georgian-Russian conflict. In 2010, Ukrainian journalist Ostap Kryvdyk defined it as “the ideology and practices of the ruling regime of the Russian Federation.”
The term became especially well-known after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In April 2022, Zelensky expressed hope that the term “rashism” would enter history textbooks worldwide. In 2023, the Verkhovna Rada voted to adopt another law in which the ideology and practices constituting Russia’s state policy were called “rashism.”
Read more at – NANews Israel News