Putin has justified the war through baseless comparisons of Kyiv’s government to Nazi Germany.
I agree, Ukraine isn’t really like the Third Reich, which built a colossal empire through a series of diplomatic and military victories. It’s more akin to the Kingdom of Romania: a minor Axis power that depended on a Western empire to settle its own imperialistic scores with the Russians and their closest allies.
But for layfolk with only a basic understanding of World War II, it is only natural that the equivalence with the Third Reich would be more obvious to them, for reasons which I have covered repeatedly.