Nicaragua’s authoritarian leader, President Daniel Ortega, in a televised speech on Monday, the 14th of October, at a ceremony honouring the country’s police force, called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the sons of the devil and Hitler, citing Nicaraguan media, reports Politico.
“The Israeli government is led by a prime minister who is the son of the devil. Why? Because he pursues a policy of terror and he is [Adolf] Hitler,” Ortega said.
“The prime minister of Israel is Hitler… just like the President of Ukraine is another Nazi, another son of Hitler who wants to involve NATO in a war against the Russian Federation,” he added.
Zelenskyy is Jewish and has said that three of his grandfather’s brothers were killed in the Holocaust by Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The Kremlin, in an attempt to justify its all-out war, has insisted that Ukraine is full of Nazis. Netanyahu is also a Jew.
Ortega has been in power since 2007 and is seen as a dictator who has imprisoned his political rivals and critics and taken control of state institutions.
Nicaragua has maintained close ties with Moscow since the Cold War, when the Soviet Union supported the 1979 overthrow of the Nicaraguan regime by leftist rebels led by Ortega.
Nicaragua has long supported the Palestinians and was one of the first countries to recognise Palestinian statehood in 1988.
Last week, the Managua administration formally broke off diplomatic relations with Israel, calling the Netanyahu government “fascist” and “genocidal”.
Earlier this year, Nicaragua also took Germany to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to stop Berlin from supplying arms to Israel for its war in Gaza. In April, the ICJ dismissed the case, which Nicaragua had taken to court under pressure from Moscow, Western intelligence officials and diplomats have told Politico.