WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th July, 2022) Russia is abusing the memory of the Holocaust and all who suffered during World War II by trying to justify its special military operation in Ukraine as an act of de-Nazification, the US State Department said on Monday.
"President Putin and his disinformation and propaganda apparatus exploit the historical memory of the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany to fabricate a pretext for their unprovoked brutal war against Ukraine," US State Department said in a release. "To serve its predatory ends, the Kremlin is exploiting the suffering and sacrifice of all those who lived through World War II and survived the Holocaust."
The State Department said in the release that Russia is drawing a false equivalence between its special operation in Ukraine and the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany.
The false equivalence has been denounced by more than 140 international historians and Holocaust remembrance institutions, such as the World Holocaust Remembrance Center Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the release said.
Russia has also attempted to delegitimize Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy being Jewish and the country's relations with Israel, among various lines of attacks that are anti-Semitic, the release added.
Russia's disinformation narrative has helped propagate Holocaust distortion amid rising anti-Semitism around the world, according to the release.
On February 24, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine after the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics requested help to defend them from intensifying attacks by Ukrainian troops. The Russian leadership said the goals of the operation are to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.
Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar said on May 8 that the defeat of Nazism in the Second World War has saved the nations of the world from slavery and the Jews from complete extermination, and the heroic deeds of Soviet military must always be remembered.
