03/25/2022 16:21 (act. 03/25/2022 16:30)
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is upset © APA / AFP / POOL
The Russian leadership accused the Western states of Nazi methods in dealing with Russia. President Vladimir Putin compared the cancellation of Russian artists’ performances in the West on Friday to the Nazi book burnings. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already compared the statements of European politicians with those of Adolf Hitler. He spoke of a “total war” against Moscow.
“Today they have declared us a true hybrid war, a total war,” Lavrov said in a meeting with representatives of the diplomatic foundation on Friday, according to the state-owned TASS agency. He specifically referred to Western economic sanctions. Many European politicians would now use the term from Germany under Hitler to explain “what they want to do with Russia.” They did not hide their goal – “to destroy, break, annihilate, crush the entire Russian economy,” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The actual use of the term by prominent EU politicians in the past few weeks is unknown. On March 1, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire spoke of a “total war” against Russia on the economic and financial level in connection with the sanctions imposed, but withdrew the wording the same day after the criticism. In 1943, the head of Nazi propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, in his loud speech at Sportpalast, called for “total war”.
“Today you are trying to annihilate a thousand-year-old country – I’m talking about the increasing discrimination against everything about Russia,” Putin said in a TV interview with the artists. “The last time such a massive action of destroying unwanted literature was carried out by the Nazis in Germany almost 90 years ago. We still remember the pictures of burning books in public places “.
Russia has been the target of unprecedented Western sanctions from the beginning of its military operation in Ukraine. Their targets include the country’s financial system, supply chains, and currency, among others. Moscow is fighting the “Nazis” in Ukraine.
The central role of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II has long played an important role in Putin’s patriotic rhetoric. Over the past few weeks, he has repeatedly used terms from the Nazi era, for example denouncing the economic “Blitzkrieg” in the West or comparing the sanctions to “anti-Semitic pogroms.”