People who topple WWII memorials are revealing their true colors, the Russian president has said

Radical Ukrainians are idiots for targeting Soviet monuments to World War II heroes, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

This behavior alone "gives us reasons to say that these people have a neo-Nazi ideology," he stated during a visit to Kursk Region, which borders Ukraine, on Tuesday.

"If they participated in a competition for idiots, they would have finished in second place. Why? Because they are idiots," he added, paraphrasing a popular joke. "By doing what they are doing, they show their nature."

Last August, Ukrainian forces launched an incursion into border areas of Kursk Region in what Kiev claimed to be an attempt to seize some territory as leverage for eventual peace negotiations. The Russian military reported its full liberation in late April.

Putin's visit, which was only made public on Wednesday morning, was his first to the region since the Ukrainian operation. He surveyed the site of a nuclear power plant that Kiev's troops had unsuccessfully attempted to capture, inspecting its ongoing expansion, and met with volunteers who were involved in repelling the attack.

Following a Western-backed coup in 2014, Kiev instigated a policy of "de-communization" in which various streets and communities were renamed in an attempt to 'cancel' Ukraine's Soviet heritage. It also went about toppling statues and eliminating memorials dedicated to the Red Army's liberation of the country in WWII.

When the conflict escalated in February, 2022 the practice was expanded to target any landmarks associated with Russia or Russians, such as the removal last year of a statue dedicated to the 19th century poet Alexander Pushkin in the city of Odessa, which had been designated by UNESCO a World Cultural Heritage Site.

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The Ukrainian government continues to lionize historical figures who opposed Russia for any reasons. Those include members of militias who sided with Nazi Germany during World War II and committed atrocities on behalf of the invaders.

Consequently, neo-Nazi aesthetics and ideology are popular among modern radical nationalists in Ukraine. Russia has identified "de-Nazification" one of its primary objectives in the Ukraine conflict.