Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced “evil” Ukraine in a message marking Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday as he continued his almost year-long invasion of the neighboring nation.
In an announcement posted on the Kremlin’s web site, Putin spoke of the “dramatic second” in World Battle II when the Auschwitz-Birkenau focus camp in Poland was liberated on January 27, 1945.
“In fact, we really feel sorry for the hundreds of thousands of useless harmless individuals – Jews and folks of different ethnic teams – who had been shot, tortured or died of starvation and illness,” Putin wrote.
The Russian chief acknowledged that it was the “Soviet Union” that put an finish to the barbaric Nazi plans in 1945 by defending the liberty and independence of his motherland, and saving the Jewish individuals and different ethnic teams from whole extermination and enslavement. . “
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And Putin continued: “Horrible tragedies can occur once more if we neglect the teachings of historical past, as evidenced by the crimes towards civilians, ethnic cleaning and punitive operations carried out by neo-Nazis in Ukraine.” “It’s this evil that our warriors are presently combating bravely, shoulder to shoulder.”
Russian officers and media have repeatedly claimed that the Ukrainian authorities is run by the Nazis, despite the fact that Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s democratically elected president, is Jewish. In the meantime, Putin’s acknowledged targets in conquering the Japanese European nation additionally included the imprecise phrases of “denazification and disarmament.”
The speech angered Western officers and was dismissed by specialists as Russian propaganda. Days after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February final yr, students of Nazism, genocide and World Battle II issued an announcement open letter Saying that they “strongly reject” the Russian authorities’s equation of the Ukrainian state with the Nazi regime with the intention to justify its unprovoked aggression.
“This speech is factually incorrect, morally repulsive, and deeply insulting to the reminiscence of the hundreds of thousands of victims of Nazism and those that bravely fought towards it, together with Russian and Ukrainian troopers of the Pink Military,” the letter stated.
Like Putin’s assertion, different messages in observance of Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Day additionally referred to the battle in Ukraine, however for various causes.
NATO Deputy Secretary Basic Mircea Jewani stated in a speech on Friday that this yr’s commemoration “was notably poignant for all of us right here in Europe” as a result of it got here almost a yr after the invasion started.
“We’re witnessing horrific scenes that we thought we had expelled from the historical past books… It’s a chilling reminder of how fragile freedom is and the way we are able to by no means take peace and safety with no consideration,” Jiwani stated.
Russian forces have been accused of committing struggle crimes in Ukraine. The Workplace of the United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that there 18,483 civilian casualties In Ukraine from the start of the struggle in February 2022 till January 22, 2023.
Newsweek I’ve reached out to the Ukrainian Ministry of International Affairs for remark.