Kremlin again targets Israel with claims of supporting ‘neo-Nazi regime’ in Ukraine
The Kremlin escalated its ongoing diplomatic feud with Israel Tuesday, when the Russian Foreign Ministry accused Jerusalem of supporting a “neo-Nazi regime” in Ukraine.
The latest incendiary remarks appeared in a post on the Foreign Ministry’s Telegram channel, a day after Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid demanded an apology from his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, for his “unforgivable and outrageous” claim that Adolf Hitler had “Jewish blood.”
Moscow doubled down on Lavrov’s stance in the Telegram statement, arguing that Lapid’s “anti-historical statements to a large extent explain the commitment of the current Israeli government to support the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv.”
Russia has sought to justify its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by claiming that the country is controlled by neo-Nazis.
Numerous critics in the international community have dismissed this reasoning by noting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and a descendant of Holocaust victims.
During an interview on Italian television Sunday, Lavrov was asked how Russia could claim it intended to “denazify” Ukraine, given Zelensky’s heritage.
“When they say, ‘What sort of nazification is this if we are Jews,’ well, I think that Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it means nothing,” Lavrov replied. “For a long time now, we’ve been hearing the wise Jewish people say that the biggest anti-Semites are the Jews themselves.”
Lavrov’s comments sparked outrage around the world, with Israel accusing the Russian diplomat of using the Holocaust as a “battering ram,” and Zelensky claiming that Russia has forgotten the lessons of World War II.
Far from being cowed by the negative reactions to Lavrov’s comments in the West, the Russian Foreign Ministry reiterated Tuesday that the argument that Ukraine could not be run by neo-Nazis because Zelensky is Jewish was “baseless and dishonest.”
“Anti-Semitism in everyday life and in politics is not stopped and is, on the contrary, nurtured [in Ukraine],” the post stated.
The Foreign Ministry went on to accuse Kyiv of allowing anti-Jewish sentiments to go unchecked, which it claimed was “especially amoral for a county that lost 1.5 million Jews during the Holocaust, and whose capital is home to a memorial honoring those who died in Babi Yar.”
The comments come despite Russian forces purportedly bombing the site of the Babi Yar massacre in Kyiv, leaving five people dead.
Israel has expressed support for Ukraine in its struggle against Russia, now in its fourth month, but it has refused to send lethal weapons, or enforce sanctions targeting Russian oligarchs, for fear of destabilizing relations with Moscow, which has acted as a powerbroker in Syria.
But Israel’s stance against Russia has hardened lately, with Lapid accusing the Kremlin of being responsible for war crimes in Ukraine last month.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet lashed at Lavrov for peddling “lies” about Jewish people being responsible for some of the world’s worst war crimes that were committed against them.
“As I’ve already said, no war today is the Holocaust nor is it like the Holocaust,” he said. “The use of the Holocaust of the Jewish people as a political battering ram must be stopped immediately.”
