Ask any Russian these two questions:
1) What was the name of the war during which the Soviet Union fought Hitler's Germany?
2) When did this war start?
The answers will tell you all you need to know about the state of Russian minds.
And this isn't new, BTW. It's not Putin's doing

The answers will of course be:
1) "The Great Patriotic War" and
2) 1941.
Most Russians never use the phrase "World War II" and the absolute majority of them is convinced the war started in June of 1941, when Hitler attacked the USSR.
This is how it's been taught there forever.

Soviet (and now, Putin's) propaganda has invented a completely new and self-serving narrative of WWII that has warped Russians' understanding of history, geopolitics and their own place in the world.
The narrative is as follows:

1) The war was Hitler's attack on the USSR and the Russian people's heroic defense of the Motherland. Everything else was a sideshow barely worth mentioning.
2) The USSR was forced to fight singlehandedly because the US and Britain didn't join in until we had Hitler on the run

3) Hitler was a madman whose singular obsessuon was conquering the Motherland and subjugating the great Russian people.
All facts inconsistent with this narrative are erased from public education and all popular culture, such as:

1) Soviet alliance with Germany in conquering Poland,
2) The Winter War,
3) Britain's fighting Hitler since 1939,
4) America's crucial lend-lease assistance,
5) and, grotesquely, the Holocaust, because nobody (especially the hated Jews) can ever outvictim the great Russian people

As a result, most Russians will tell you that America sat on its ass until 1944, that Jews collaborated with Germans being the cowardly weaklings they are, that Russia saved the world after being stealthily attacked, that their historical destiny is to fight evil from the West.

And these convictions are so deeply ingrained that you will never, ever convince 99.999% of Russians, even some of the most liberal ones, that the term "Great Patriotic War" is inappropriate and constitutes erasure of history and other nations' heroism and sacrifice.
Never.
Ever.

Which is precisely why Russia has been spreading nonsensical and bizarre talking points about Ukraine's being a Nazi staye and its Jewish president a new Hitler.
Russians see no inconsistencies here.
Nazism is simply opposing Russia, nothing else. It's a very deeply held belief.

Azov's sleeve patches serve as a cheap and silly "proof" for the Western tankies. Russians don't need any vaguely fascist symbols to identify a Nazi.
A Nazi is anyone Russia calls a Nazi. This is how it's been forever. This labeling, in their minds, is Russia's sacred right.