Russian FM calls Ukraine’s Zelensky a ‘traitor’ to the Jewish people

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov calls Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky — who is Jewish — a “pure Nazi” and a “traitor to the Jewish people.”

“Zelensky has turned 180 degrees from a man who came to power on slogans of peace, on slogans of ‘leave the Russian language alone, it is our common language, our common culture,'” says Lavrov in an interview with the Russian Defense Ministry outlet Krasnaya Zvezda, “and in six months has turned into a pure Nazi and, as Russian President [Vladimir] Putin correctly said, into a traitor to the Jewish people.”

Lavrov has enraged Israel and other countries during the ongoing war in Ukraine with his comments on Hitler and Jews. In 2022, Lavrov claimed that Adolf Hitler had Jewish heritage and that “some of the worst antisemites are Jews,” in an attempt to explain Moscow’s invasion as an attempt to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.

He also accused the US and Europe of seeking a “final solution” to “the Russia question,” comparable to Hitler’s plan to wipe out the Jews in World War II, drawing anger from Israel, Germany and some of Moscow’s other Western adversaries.