Demonstrators at Habima Square in Tel Aviv, Israel/ Photo: AFP/Jack Guez
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said like President Volodymyr Zelensky, Adolf Hitler ‘also had Jewish blood’.
Lavrov was asked on Italy’s Rete 4 channel to back Russia’s ‘denazify Ukraine’ statement since President Zelensky is Jewish.
The full interview can be viewed below.
Lavrov shrugged off Zelensky’s Jewish origin and said it didn’t matter because “Hitler also had Jewish blood, so it means nothing”.
“For a long time now, we’ve been hearing the wise Jewish people say that the biggest anti-Semites are the Jews themselves,” he added.
“His Jewishness does not negate his Nazism”.
On Monday, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid slammed his Russian counterpart for the “unforgivable and scandalous comment”.
“This is a terrible historical error, and we expect an apology”, Lapid said. “The Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust.”
Lavrov said President Zelensky’s Jewishness did not justify Russia’s intention to ‘denazify’ Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Dani Dayan – chairman of Israel Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem – slammed Lavrov’s remarks as “an insult and a severe blow to the victims of the real Nazism”.
Dayan said Lavrov was spreading “an antisemitic conspiracy theory with no basis in fact” on Israel’s Kan radio.
He said it is “among other things, a complete distortion of the history and a serious affront to the victims of Nazism”.
A month after Russia invaded Ukraine, Zelensky called on Israel for support and asked the Jewish state to supply his nation with weapons. Israel sent bulletproof vests and helmets.
On 20 March, demonstrators gathered at Habima Square in the centre of Israel’s Mediterranean coastal city of Tel Aviv ahead of President Zelensky’s televised address.
Some of the protest signs depicted the superimposed face of President Vladimir Putin atop the signature moustache of Nazi Germany’s leader Adolf Hitler.