By Cassandra Vinograd -
NBC News
Russian forces damaged a Holocaust memorial near the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said on Saturday, the second such incident since Russia invaded Ukraine a month ago.
The ministry said in a Twitter post that Russian troops attacked the memorial site called Drobitsky Yar.
He separately cited continued shelling around the city.
An estimated 15,000 Jews were shot or forced into mass graves in Drobitsky Yar, a ravine on the outskirts of the eastern city of Kharkiv.
[No, the symbol on the Ukrainian president's military shirt is not a Nazi cross]
The site was damaged when the city of Kharkiv was bombed on Friday, March 25.
In this image, a resident walks away from a burning building hit by a Russian missile in the Moskovskyi district. Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag
The damage to the memorial site comes amid a Russian invasion with strong criticism of suspected Nazi groups in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's stated reason for invading Ukraine was to rid the country of so-called Nazi elements.
Experts have criticized the accusations as libelous and false.
However, Putin's use of the terminology has persisted since he launched the invasion, and he has repeatedly tried to draw parallels between the actions of Ukraine and the West with Nazi Germany.
The Ukrainians, for their part, have called this hypocrisy and compared the invading Russian forces to the Nazis.
[Putin says he doesn't want to occupy Ukraine but "save it from the Nazis." This is how Russian propaganda works to justify the invasion]
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“The Nazis have returned.
Exactly 80 years later,” the ministry posted on Twitter on Saturday with a photograph of the damaged space.
NBC News was unable to independently verify the photo's veracity.
Earlier this month, Zelenskyy, who is Jewish and said three members of his family died in World War II, invoked the barbarity of the Holocaust when Russian forces attacked a television tower next to Babi Yar, a memorial site where Nazis massacred some 33,000 Jews in 1941.
That attack on the television tower killed five people and drew international condemnation.
There was no evidence that Babi Yar, believed to be one of the largest mass graves in Europe, was the target of the missile.
On Saturday, the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center noted the damage to Drobitsky Yar.
"Russia continues to attack not only the civilian population of Ukraine but also places of remembrance," he said on Twitter.
