Even as Russia faces growing outrage the international stage over its attack on Ukraine, Moscow scored a major diplomatic self-goal.
A senior Russian minister's comments regarding German dictator Adolf Hitler's ancestry made the Jewish nation of Israel extremely angry.
Russia's foreign minister made the comment while repeating Moscow's justification of the war by accusing Ukraine's current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of being a neo-Nazi.
Sergey Lavrov said, "He (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy) puts forward an argument: 'What kind of Nazification can we have if I'm a Jew?' If I remember it right, I may be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it doesn't mean absolutely anything. For some time, we have heard from the wise Jewish people that the biggest antisemites were Jewish."
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Reacting sharply to the comment, the Israeli government sought an apology from the Russian establishment. Yair Lapid said, "The remarks of foreign minister Sergey Lavrov are an unforgivable scandal. Hitler was not from Jewish descendance, and the Jews didn't kill themselves during the holocaust. We make every effort to keep good relations with Russia but there's a limit and this limit has been crossed this time. The government of Russia needs to apologize to us and to the Jewish people."