BRUSSELS – The European Union on Thursday condemned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s claim that Western policy towards Russia over Ukraine matched the Nazi “Final Solution” plan of genocide against the Jewish people.
“Latest comments by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov accusing the ‘West’ of seeking a ‘Final Solution’ for Russia are completely false, insulting and trampling on the memory of six million Jewish people and other victims who were killed in the Holocaust was systematically killed in the U.S., EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement.
“This adds to Minister Lavrov’s previous anti-social remarks.”
“The Russian regime’s manipulation of truth to justify its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine has reached another unacceptable and abhorrent low point,” Borrell said.
Moscow’s top diplomat – whose past comments on Hitler and Jews prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to tender a rare apology on his behalf last year – compared at his annual press conference on Wednesday.
Lavrov said, “Just as Napoleon mobilized practically all of Europe against the Russian Empire, just as Hitler mobilized and captured most of the European countries and sent them against the Soviet Union, now the United States has A coalition has been organized.”
Example: Rescuers carry the body of a man killed in a Russian missile attack on an apartment building in the southeastern city of Dnipro, Ukraine, January 16, 2023. (Evgeny Maloletka/AP)
Western countries, he said, “are waging war against our country by proxy through Ukraine.
“The task is the same: the final solution of the ‘Russian question’.” Just as Hitler wanted to finally solve the Jewish question.”
“There is no parallel between the crimes of Nazi Germany and international help for Ukraine in defending its territory and people against an unjustified aggression,” Borrell insisted.
“Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring country, targets and kills civilians on a daily basis with the stated aim of destroying the country and the Ukrainian nation,” he said.
“Holocaust denial, distortion, and trivialization are against EU law and EU values. The EU has made a clear commitment to ensure that such atrocities never happen again.”
Israel said on Wednesday that Lavrov’s comments were “unacceptable”.
The Foreign Ministry said, “Any comparison with Hitler’s Final Solution plan for the extermination of the Jewish people or relating to current events distorts the historical truth, dishonors the memory of those killed and survivors and strongly condemns it.” should be rejected.”
Jews were deported from the Warsaw Ghetto after the April–May 1943 Uprising.
Germany said the statement was “appalling”.
Berlin’s ambassador, Stefan Seibert, said, “There is a historical lesson to draw here: Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine will neither be forgotten nor forgiven.”
France’s embassy in Israel called Lavrov’s remarks “outrageous and disrespectful”.
“The only ‘Final Solution’ left an inexplicable mark in the history of mankind,” read the French statement.
It is not the first time Lavrov has invoked Hitler and Jews in his anti-Western comments, and the 72-year-old has faced accusations of anti-Semitism in the past.
In May last year, Putin apologized to Israel after Lavrov claimed that Hitler had “Jewish blood”.
Lazar Berman contributed to this report.
