MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin repeated a claim on Friday that neo-Nazis were committing crimes in Ukraine – an allegation Moscow has used to justify its military intervention – as the world marked Holocaust Remembrance Day. Have done
“Forgetting the lessons of history leads to the repetition of terrible tragedies,” Putin said.
“This is evident from the crimes against civilians, ethnic cleansing and punitive actions conducted by neo-Nazis in Ukraine. It is against the evil that our soldiers are fighting bravely.
Supporters of Putin’s military campaign allege that Ukraine’s treatment of Russian speakers in the country is comparable to the actions of Nazi Germany.
One of the goals of the operation was the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine, Putin said when he announced nearly a year ago that he had ordered Russian troops to move toward Kyiv.
The claims have been rejected by the Ukrainian government, the country’s Jewish community, and world leaders.
The Soviet Union’s victory over Hitler’s army – long a symbol of patriotic pride for Russians – has been at the center since the beginning of the military intervention.
Putin said that “attempts to revise our country’s contribution to the great victory (against Hitler) are in fact tantamount to justifying the crimes of Nazism and opening the way for the revival of its pernicious ideology.”
Friday marks the 78th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp built by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland – a date that has become International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Russian President Vladimir Putin lays flowers at the Piskarivskoye Memorial Cemetery to mark the 80th anniversary of the success of the Nazi siege of Leningrad during World War II in Saint Petersburg on January 18, 2023. (Mikhail Klementyev / Sputnik / AFP)
The Auschwitz Museum did not invite Russian representatives to the ceremony, the day the Soviet Red Army liberated the Nazi camp due to its offensive in Ukraine.
“It will take a very long time and very deep self-examination for Russia after this struggle to return to the gatherings of the civilized world,” Piotr Savicky, a spokesman for the museum at the former camp site, told AFP.
Russia’s chief rabbi Berel Lazar told AFP that “this is clearly an insult to us as we fully know and remember the Red Army’s role in the liberation of Auschwitz and the victory over Nazism.”
“These political games have no place on Doomsday,” Lazar said.
