President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said Ukraine “glorifies” Adolf Hitler’s SS killing squads and vowed to “eradicate Nazism,” as he opened a memorial marking 80 years since the end of the siege of Leningrad.
The Russian leader has repeatedly invoked the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War to justify his current offensive against Ukraine.
His charge that Ukraine is a fascist state that needs “de-Nazifying” has been debunked as false by independent experts.
On Saturday, Putin said “the regime in Kyiv glorifies Hitler’s accomplices, the SS.”
And Russia would “do everything possible to suppress and finally eradicate Nazism,” he said.
“The followers of Nazi executioners, whatever they call themselves today, are doomed,” he said near Saint Petersburg, his home town and the modern-day name of Leningrad.
Ukraine, the West and independent scholars have repeatedly rejected Putin’s attempt to cast Kyiv as Nazi sympathisers.
He was speaking at the opening of a new memorial complex to victims of the siege of Leningrad — an event which forms a major part of Putin’s personal identity and one which has totemic importance for millions of Russians.
More than 800,000 people died from starvation, disease and bombardment during the 872-day encirclement by German forces in the Second World War.
