Russia accused Ukraine of committing “neo-Nazi” crimes on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Every year, on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death campin southern Poland, and is known as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

This year, due to the war taking place in the Ukraine after a Russian invasion on February 24, Russia was not invited to participate in the event. However, that did not stop the Russian president from launching a new statement against Ukraine.

“Forgetting the lessons of history leads to the repetition of terrible tragedies. Proof of this are the crimes against civilians, ethnic cleansing (and) the punitive actions organized by neo-Nazis in Ukraine,” Vladimir Putin said in a statement shared this Friday.

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“It is against this evil that our soldiers are fighting bravely” in Ukraine, the president said. “Any attempt to revise our country’s contribution to the Great Victory (in World War II) amounts to justifying the crimes of Nazism and opens the way to the revival of its criminal ideology,” he added.

Putin did not forget to mention “the millions of innocent dead, Jews, representatives of other nationalities, who were shot down, tortured, who died of hunger and disease.”

It is the first year that Russia has not been invited to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, something that Russia’s chief rabbi, Berel Lazar, described as a “humiliation”. (YO)