Moscow on Tuesday accused Israel of “supporting the neo-Nazi regime in kyiv”, driving the nail home after the head of Russian diplomacy resumed a conspiracy theory about the alleged “Jewish blood” of Adolf Hitler. “We have paid attention to the anti-historic statements of (Israeli) Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, which largely explain the current government’s decision to support the neo-Nazi regime in kyiv,” Russian diplomacy said in a statement. “History unfortunately knows tragic examples of cooperation between Jews and Nazis,” the statement added.
A speech justifying the “denazification” of Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr “Zelensky makes this argument: how can Nazism be present (in Ukraine) if he himself is Jewish. I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood”, had launched Sergei Lavrov Sunday evening, in an interview with an Italian media. Hitler’s alleged “Jewish blood” is a conspiracy theory treated with skepticism by historians.
“Minister Lavrov’s remarks are at the same time scandalous, unforgivable and a horrible historical error”, condemned his Israeli counterpart Yaïr Lapid on Monday, specifying that the Russian ambassador to Israel had been summoned for “clarifications”. “No war is comparable to the Holocaust… The use of the Jewish genocide as a political tool must stop immediately”, denounced for his part the Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi for his part deemed Sergei Lavrov’s remarks “aberrant” on Monday evening. “And as for the part referring to Hitler, it’s really obscene,” he commented. Moscow has repeatedly said that it wants to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine, thus justifying the offensive launched on February 24.
A position defended by Russian diplomacy
On Tuesday, Russian diplomacy again echoed these arguments, saying that “the Jewish origin of the president (Zelensky) is no guarantee of protection against rampant neo-Nazism in the country. Ukraine, by the way, does not is not the only one in this case”, also quoting Latvian President Egils Levits, who “also has Jewish roots and he also covers (…) the rehabilitation of the Waffen SS in his country”.
Moscow also accuses Jerusalem of “ignoring the epidemic of destruction and desecration of monuments to the world’s true righteous: the Red Army soldiers who stopped the Holocaust and saved the Jewish world”, and seems to draw a parallel between anti-Semitism and “Russophobia” in Ukraine.