Israel’s mercenaries are fighting in Ukraine, says Moscow

TEHRAN (Defapress) - The Russian foreign ministry spokesperson on Wednesday said that Israeli mercenaries were fighting alongside Ukraine’s far-right Azov Regiment.

News ID: 84120

Date: 05 May 2022 - 02:28

In an interview with radio station Sputnik, Maria Zakharova stated, “Israeli mercenaries are practically shoulder to shoulder with Azov militants in Ukraine.”

Its members are part of the Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol, which is holed up within the Azovstal steel complex, which Russian soldiers attacked on Tuesday.

By implying that Israelis are fighting with Azov, whom Russia regards as “fascists” and “Nazis,” Moscow is exacerbating tensions that arose when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared on Sunday that Hitler had “Jewish blood.”

His comments provoked fury in Israel, which labelled them “unforgivable and outrageous” and a “terrible historical error.”

Russia’s foreign ministry accused Israel regime on Tuesday of supporting “the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv.” Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish.

On Monday, Tel Aviv regime summoned the Russian ambassador over remarks by the Kremlin foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, that Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood” and that the “most rabid antisemites tend to be Jews”.