In a conversation with Russian ambassador to Latvia Mikhail Vanin, Latvia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the antisemitic statements of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and non-diplomatic statements involving Latvia’s President Egils Levits.
According to an entry on the Latvian ministry’s Twitter account, the meeting with Vanin took place on Thursday, 5 May. Latvia’s representatives condemned the antisemitic and non-diplomatic statements made about Latvia’s State President. Russian embassy also received condemnation for hate speech on social networks.
Latvia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned Vanin to issue a protest in relation to the antisemitic statements made by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In response to the unacceptable antisemitic statements and the form of communication used by the Russian embassy on social networks, Latvia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned Vanin to provide explanations and issue a protest.
Latvia’s President Egils Levits was mentioned in the publication On Antisemitism made by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This publication stated that Levits has Jewish ties and that he is covering up the rehabilitation of Waffen SS in his country.
Israel has also summoned Russian ambassador there to provide explanations after Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov in a recent television interview compared Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to Hitler.
Lavrov also defended Russian President Vladimir Putin’s declared goal behind the war in Ukraine – so-called denazification, adding that Zelenskyy’s Jewish background does not make Putin’s position weak.
Lavrov also said that Zelenskyy may be Jewish, but «Adolf Hitler also had Jewish blood».
«That does not mean anything at all. The wise Jewish people say that the most keen anti-Semites are usually Jews,» said the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs in his interview to Italian TV channel Rete4. This statement later caused a shock in Israel.
«Foreign Minister Lavrov’s remarks are both an unforgivable and outrageous statement as well as a terrible historical error,» said Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in a statement released on Monday, 2 May.
«Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust. The lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves of antisemitism,» he added.
«My grandfather was not killed by Jews, but by Nazis,» Lapid continued, suggesting that Lavrov should open a history book.
«Ukrainians are not Nazis, only the Nazis were Nazis, only they carried out the systematic extermination of Jews,» he concluded.
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The head of the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem Dani Dayan called Lavrov’s remarks «absurd, delusional, dangerous and despicable.»