Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. (Yuriy Kadobnov/AFP via Getty Images)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has once again sparked widespread outrage by comparing his nation’s international isolation – a result of last year’s unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine – to the killing of European Jews during the Holocaust.
“Just as Hitler wanted a ‘final solution’ to the Jewish question, now if you read Western politicians … they are clearly saying that Russia must suffer a strategic defeat,” Lavrov, a close and longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Wednesday.
Israel strongly condemned Lavrov’s self-pitying view of European history – and of the European present, where Russia, not Germany, is seen as the greatest threat to the continent’s peace and prosperity.
“Any comparison or connection of current events with Hitler’s final plan to exterminate the Jewish people distorts the historical truth, desecrates the memory of the dead and the survivors, and must be categorically rejected,” the Israeli foreign ministry said.
Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Center in Jerusalem. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)
Yad Vashem, Jerusalem’s Holocaust museum and memorial, criticized what it described as Lavrov’s “insult to the actual victims of Nazism,” according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.
In Washington, Lavrov’s comments – which singled out the United States, the organizing force behind the coalition supporting Ukraine – were met with equally strong rebuke.
“Our first reaction is how dare he compare anything to the Holocaust — anything — let alone a war that they started?” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told Yahoo News at a press briefing Wednesday. “It’s almost so absurd it’s not worth responding to,” Kirby said of Lavrov’s provocative musings.
Kirby pointed out that since Russia invaded Ukraine — first in 2014, then much more widely in early 2022 — claims of a casualty make no sense. “Today and from the beginning,” he said, Putin “tried to portray this as Mother Russia under threat. False.
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Kirby went on to describe the Holocaust comparison as both “ludicrous” and “ludicrous,” a departure from the carefully crafted statements White House officials tend to use when discussing sensitive international issues. As far as Russia is concerned, those concerns have long since disappeared.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. (Kevin Deitch/Getty Images)
The so-called Endlösung der Judenfrage or “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” was the genocide carried out in stages by the Nazis as they conquered much of Europe. The campaign ended with the establishment of several death camps, most notably in Poland, where millions of Jews and other people were killed.
Despite losing millions of civilians and soldiers in World War II, the Soviet Union played a key role in defeating Hitler. Victory over Nazism remains a central tenet of Russian national identity.
When he first invaded Ukraine, Putin said his intention was to “denazify” the nation’s leadership, a claim made especially dubious by the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was the first Jew elected to the post.
As the invasion was delayed, Russia began to invent increasingly unusual reasons for a war that was ill-conceived from the start.
In an apparent effort to revive the original justification for the war, Lavrov told an Italian newspaper last spring that Hitler “had Jewish blood.” The lie appears to serve – absurd as it is – the argument that Zelensky’s heritage does not absolve him from allowing Ukraine to descend into fascism.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)
Despite international outrage, the Russian Foreign Ministry deepened the conflict with a social media post that alluded to “tragic examples of Jewish-Nazi cooperation,” a deliberately grotesque misrepresentation of history. Putin eventually apologized to then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
The Kremlin’s latest reference to the Holocaust could damage strained relations between Russia and Israel, where a new far-right coalition government led by Benjamin Netanyahu is now taking shape. Although domestic issues, including the enduring conflict over Palestinian territorial claims, dominate Israeli politics, the question of Russia has not been neglected in the long term.
Returning to office for his sixth term, Netanyahu prides himself on a close relationship with Putin – and none with Zelensky. Russia’s ties to Syria and Iran make it difficult for Netanyahu to offer significant military aid to Ukraine. At the same time, Israel’s closest ally, the United States, leads the pro-Ukrainian alliance.
The United States recently moved some ammunition it was storing in Israel to the battlefield in Ukraine.
“These are sovereign decisions for nations to make,” Kirby said Wednesday of Israel’s cautious approach to the war in Eastern Europe. “We’re not wringing our hands.”
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