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Russia's Foreign Minister Lavrov
Photo: IMAGO/Alexey Filippov / IMAGO/SNA
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov provoked with a statement regarding the Ukraine war.
The ambassador was summoned to Israel, and the German government commented briefly and clearly.
On Sunday evening on Italian television Rete4, Lavrov repeated the Russian justification for war that Nazis were at work in Ukraine.
As a counter-argument, they say: »How can there be a nazification if he (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy) is Jewish?
I can be wrong
But Adolf Hitler also had Jewish blood.
That means nothing at all.
The wise Jewish people say that the most fervent anti-Semites are usually Jews.«
The spokesman for the federal government, Steffen Hebestreit, called Lavrov's statement "absurd".
He said in Berlin: "I think the Russian propaganda that is being carried out by Foreign Minister Lavrov in this case does not need to be commented on any further."
Outrage also in Israel
In Israel, the statement caused outrage.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has condemned the Russian foreign minister's Nazi comparison.
"His statements are untrue and serve a false purpose," Bennett said, according to his office.
"The aim of such lies is to blame the Jews themselves for the worst crimes in history that have been committed against them."
"No war today is like the Holocaust or comparable to the Holocaust," said Bennett.
"The misuse of the Shoah by the Jewish people as an instrument of political debate must stop immediately." Israel's Foreign Minister Jair Lapid had previously spoken.
"Scandalous statement"
He spoke of an "unforgivable, scandalous statement, a terrible historical error".
Lapid added: "It wasn't Jews who killed my grandfather, it was Nazis." He advised Lavrov to consult a history book.
»The Ukrainians are not Nazis.
Only the Nazis were Nazis.
Only they carried out the systematic extermination of the Jews.«
The head of the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, Dani Dayan, called Lavrov's statements "absurd, delusional, dangerous and despicable".
The Israeli Foreign Ministry asked the Russian Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov for an interview.
asc/dpa
