Putin equates Ukraine’s “crimes” with those of Nazi Germany on the day of the Holocaust
For Javier G Cuesta from Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin equated Ukraine with Nazi Germany on International Holocaust Day. “Crimes against civilians, ethnic cleansing and punitive actions organized by neo-Nazis in Ukraine are precisely the evil that our soldiers fought shoulder to shoulder (during World War II),” the Russian president said.
In Russia, it is against the law to compare the Third Reich to Stalin’s Soviet Union, and Putin influenced this in the message released to mark the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by the Red Army, an event he did not attend ., the Kremlin invited: “Any attempt to revise our country’s contribution to the Great Victory actually amounts to justifying the crimes of Nazism and paves the way for the revival of its deadly ideology,” Putin said.
This isn’t the first time Moscow has resorted to the Holocaust to attack its rivals. In mid-January, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also recalled the murder of six million Jews in order to criticize his rivals, then the US and its allies: “Just as Hitler wanted a final solution to the Jewish question, if you read Western politicians clearly say that Russia must suffer a strategic defeat.”
And last May, Israel summoned the Russian ambassador and demanded an apology after Lavrov himself claimed that Hitler had Jewish roots, like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, pictured by Mkhail Metzel, speaks with Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar and the head of the Federation of Jewish Communities Alexander Boroda in Moscow on Thursday.