Michael Hernandez
18 January 2023•Update: 18 January 2023
WASHINGTON
The White House sharply rejected "ludicrous" accusations Wednesday from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that the approach by the West to Russia’s war against Ukraine is akin to the Holocaust.
"How dare he compare anything to the Holocaust, anything, let alone the war that they started," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters during a virtual news conference.
"Ukraine posed no threat to Russia. None whatsoever. Ukraine posed no threat militarily to anybody. And Mr. Putin whipped up this false narrative of an existential threat to his country and started throwing around ridiculous words about Neo-Nazism, Nazis in Ukraine, and then launched this unprovoked invasion almost a year ago today," added Kirby.
He was referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The sharp refutation comes after the Kremlin's top diplomat said efforts by the West to aid Ukraine against Moscow's forces are equivalent to Hitler's "final solution," which sought to violently eradicate Europe's Jewish population.
The West, Lavrov claimed, is "waging war against our country with the same task: the 'final solution' of the Russian question."
Russia's leadership "has tried to couch this as Mother Russia being under threat. False," said Kirby.
"You heard some of that ridiculous, ludicrous claim from Lavrov today that this is somehow the West lining up, you know, and threatening Russia's right to exist," he said. "It's almost so absurd that it's not worth responding to other than the truly offensive manner in which he tried to cast this in terms of Hitler and the Holocaust."
