Sergey Lavrov, who once said Adolf Hitler had Jewish origins, reiterated his country’s claims that its war on Ukraine is to “de-nazify” it.
(JNS)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Sunday called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, a “pure Nazi” and a “traitor to the Jewish people.”
Lavrov made the remarks, which are in line with Moscow’s propaganda about Ukraine in recent years, during an interview published in Krasnaya Zvezda, the official publication of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
“Zelenskyy has turned 180 degrees from a man who came to power on slogans of peace, on slogans of ‘Leave us alone with the Russian language, it is our common language, our common culture’ (all this is on the internet) and in six months has turned into a pure Nazi and, as Russian President [Vladimir] Putin correctly said, into a traitor to the Jewish people,” Lavrov said.
Putin in 2023 called Zelenskyy a “disgrace to Jewish people.”
Following his victory in the 2019 Ukrainian elections, Zelenskyy said he would “reboot” peace talks with Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, according to a BBC report at the time.
Moscow has described Ukraine’s leadership as “neo-Nazis” to justify its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In invoking World War II to justify Russia’s invasion, President Vladimir Putin has said that his offensive aimed to “de-nazify” the country.
The invasion has led to an ongoing and brutal war.
Jewish community groups have consistently condemned Russia’s use of terminology from the Second World War and Holocaust-related terms to refer to the conflict.
Israel has distanced itself from attempts to equate the war to the Shoah and World War II from both sides, rejecting Zelenskyy’s juxtaposition of the Holocaust and the Russian invasion, and also the Kremlin’s frequent analogies.
A spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment by JNS on Lavrov’s latest remark.
In 2022, Lavrov insisted that Zelenskyy’s Jewish heritage does not preclude Nazi inclinations. He cited a debunked conspiracy theory suggesting Adolf Hitler was Jewish.
“So when they say ‘How can Nazification exist if we’re Jewish?’ In my opinion, Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it doesn’t mean absolutely anything. For some time we have heard from the Jewish people that the biggest antisemites were Jewish,” Lavrov said.
Israel condemned his comments, calling them “unforgivable.”
Image: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attends a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow on May 14, 2019. Photo provided by the Presidential Press and Information Office of Russia.
