“Revision of Nazism”
Selenskyj compares invasion with Hitler’s attack
05/08/2022, 2:20 p.m
With a haunting speech, Volodymyr Zelenskyj commemorates the victory of the anti-Hitler coalition 77 years ago. The Ukrainian President also draws parallels to the current situation in his country. He describes the Russian attack on Ukraine as a “bloody new version of Nazism”.
In an emotional video address from the heavily damaged Kiev suburb of Borodyanka, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky drew parallels between the German invasion of World War II and the current Russian invasion. “In Ukraine, they organized a bloody new edition of Nazism,” Zelensky said of the Russian attack on Ukraine in a black-and-white video in front of the rubble of a residential building. “A fanatical imitation of the regime, its ideas, actions, words and symbols. A maddeningly detailed rendition of its bestialities and alibis that supposedly give this evil a sacred aim”.
He accused the Russian leadership of having deleted “never” from the anti-war slogan “never again” with its attack on February 24 and replaced it with the slogan “we can repeat that”. Since the invasion began, the Russians had repeated many of the Nazi atrocities, albeit under different slogans, he said.
On the commemoration of the end of World War II, Zelenskyy recalled the contribution of the Ukrainian people to the victory of the anti-Hitler coalition. The country had suffered from bombing, mass shootings and occupation, had lost people in concentration camps and gas chambers, in captivity and in forced labour, but in the end it had won anyway.
Proof is the destroyed “Werewolf” bunker owned by Adolf Hitler near the Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia. This shows that evil cannot escape its responsibility. “It can’t hide in the bunker,” he said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who critics have repeatedly accused since the beginning of the war of being in a secret safe place as a precaution.