The EU on Thursday condemned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s claim that the West’s policy towards Russia in relation to Ukraine resembles Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s planned “final solution” for Europe’s Jews.
“Recent statements by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov accusing ‘the West’ of seeking a ‘final solution’ for Russia are utterly misplaced, disrespectful and trampling on the memory of the six million Jews and other victims who systematically died in the Holocaust were murdered, with feet,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement.
“This complements previous anti-Semitic statements by Minister Lavrov.”
Borrell said, “The Russian regime’s manipulation of the truth to justify its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine has reached another unacceptable and despicable low.”
Moscow’s top diplomat – whose previous comments on Hitler and the Jews prompted President Vladimir Putin to make a rare apology on his behalf last year – made the comparison at his annual news conference on Wednesday.
“Just as Napoleon mobilized virtually all of Europe against the Russian Empire, just as Hitler mobilized and conquered the majority of European countries and sent them against the Soviet Union, the United States has now organized a coalition,” Lavrov said.
Western countries, he said, are “waging war against our country through Ukraine by proxy.”
“The task is the same: the final solution to the ‘Russian question’. Just like Hitler wanted to finally solve the Jewish question.”
Borrell stressed that there was “no parallel between the crimes of Nazi Germany and international assistance to Ukraine in defending its territory and people against unjustified aggression”.
“Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring country, targeting and killing civilians there on a daily basis with the stated aim of destroying the country and the Ukrainian nation,” he said.
“Denying, distorting and trivializing the Holocaust violate EU law and EU values. The EU has made an unequivocal commitment to ensure that such atrocities never happen again.”
It is not the first time that Lavrov has invoked Hitler and the Jews in his outspoken anti-Western statements, and the 72-year-old has faced accusations of anti-Semitism before.
In May last year, Putin apologized to Israel after Lavrov claimed that Hitler had “Jewish blood”.