Posted on 05/05/22
| News Source: The Hill
Russia’s doubling down on offensive remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who accused Jews of being antisemitic and said that Israel is supporting a “neo-Nazi regime” in Kyiv, are an indication that Moscow is all-in on the Ukraine war and is likely to intensify its efforts in the East.
Lavrov is a loyal ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his remarks received a full-throated defense from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs — issued in a nearly 1,000-word statement on Tuesday.
Israeli leaders, who had positioned their country as a possible intermediary in the war, have issued stark condemnations, though it is unclear if the controversy will shift Jerusalem’s position. Israel so far has held back from sending military hardware to Ukraine to maintain relations with Russia.
Most observers said the ugly comments and Moscow’s defense of them show Russia remains focused on its propaganda effort, which from the beginning has been based on false tropes about neo-Nazis in Ukraine.
“All of this goes to the bigger reality, I think, that the Russians simply do not want an offramp,” said Don Jensen, director of the Russia and Europe program at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
“They want to win this thing, and the whole tone of what he said, the whole ahistorical foolishness of it, just shows that they’re not interested in sitting down or talking about a peace settlement or anything like that, not right now.”
Lavrov in an interview on Italian television said Adolf Hitler had “Jewish origins” and that “the wise Jewish people say that the most ardent antisemites are usually Jews.”
“It sounds like a guy who is losing the war,” U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides said in remarks about the comments during a panel hosted by the Atlantic Council on Tuesday.
“I don’t want to give it credibility, it was so outrageously stupid. … I think ultimately the actions of what Russia has done has set Russia back, in my humble view, not only with Israel, but for the world for 30 years.”
Some say Lavrov, an experienced diplomat, knew what he was doing with remarks that at a glance may have looked clumsy.
“I do not believe that what he said about Hitler and about the Jews, that it slipped from his tongue, that it was a mistake,” said Ksenia Svetlova, a former member of Israel’s parliament and who was born in Moscow.
“It was a well-thought-out, planned attack. It’s part of the justification of the Russian regime.”