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Russia warned today that failure to halt the escalating unrest in Ukraine would threaten peace across Europe, and accused Ukrainian ultra-nationalists of rights violations on a mass scale.
"Joint efforts by the Ukrainian people and the international community should as soon as possible put an end to racism, xenophobia, ethnic intolerance, (and) the glorification of the Nazis and their Bandera accomplices," the foreign ministry said in a report.
Stepan Bandera was a leader of the hugely controversial Ukranian Insurgent Army (UPA), which battled against the Soviets and collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.
He is hailed as a hero in western Ukraine which was occupied by the Soviet Union during the war.
"The alternative is fraught with such destructive consequences for Europe's peace, stability and democratic development that it is absolutely necessary to prevent it," said the Russian foreign ministry.
The lengthy report called the "White Book" also said "ultranationalist, extremist and neo-Nazi" forces had monopolised the protest movement in Ukraine and committed "mass" rights violations against the country's Russian speakers.
The study posted on the Kremlin and foreign ministry websites lists a litany of what Moscow says are rights violations, instances of "torture" and "inhumane treatment" in Ukraine between late November 2013 and late March.
The report is accompanied by photographs of the clashes which broke out in ex-Soviet Ukraine after the then Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign key political and economic agreements with the European Union in November.
The clashes degenerated into a bloody uprising that ousted in Yanukovych in February and pitted Moscow against the West.
In March Russia took over Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and violence has since spread to the Russian-speaking east and south of Ukraine.
The report also features a picture of Washington's top diplomat for Europe, Victoria Nuland, offering cookies to pro-Western protesters massing on Kiev's Independent Square last winter.
Russia and the West have both accused each other of bringing Ukraine to the brink of war.
