Putin equates Ukraine’s ‘crimes’ with those of Nazi Germany, on Holocaust Day

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 side by side (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 published for the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz extermination camp by the Army. red, an event he did not attend. urged the Kremlin. “Any attempt to revise our country’s contribution to the Great Victory actually amounts to justifying the crimes of Nazism, paves the way for the revival of its murderous ideology,” Putin said.

This is not the first time that Moscow has resorted to the Holocaust to attack its rivals. In mid-January, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also recalled the murder of six million Jews to criticize his rivals, on this occasion the United States and their allies: “Just as Hitler wanted a final solution to the Jewish question. If you read Western politicians, they clearly say that Russia must suffer a strategic defeat.”

And in May last year, Israel summoned the Russian ambassador and demanded an apology after Lavrov himself suggested Hitler had Jewish roots, as did Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Photographed by Mkhail Metzel, Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with Russian Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar and Federation of Jewish Communities head Alexander Boroda in Moscow on Thursday.