The Yad Vashem Holocaust Research Center on Sunday condemned comparisons to the Holocaust for propaganda purposes surrounding Russia's military invasion of Ukraine.
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In a series of Twitter posts, Yad Vashem chair Dani Dayan wrote, "Yad Vashem deplores the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which will inevitably lead to dire consequences. We fear in particular for the wellbeing of innocent civilians and deplore any deliberate endangerment of their safety.
"Moreover, the propagandist discourse accompanying the current hostilities is saturated with irresponsible statements and completely inaccurate comparisons with Nazi ideology and actions before and during the Holocaust. Yad Vashem condemns this trivialization and distortion of the historical facts of the Holocaust."
The US Holocaust Memorial and Museum on Thursday condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin had "misrepresented and misappropriated Holocaust history."
Putin justified the invasion of Ukraine by calling it a military operation to "de-Nazify" the country, despite its democratically elected Jewish president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has many relatives who were killed in the Holocaust.
An estimated 1.5 million Jews were killed in Ukraine by Nazi mobile units called Einsatzgruppen who shot their victims at close range in what is described as the "Holocaust by Bullets."
Putin also justified the invasion of Ukraine by claiming that Kyiv is committing genocide against the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine which is home to the breakaway self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.
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That assertion prompted Ukraine on Sunday to file a suit against Russia at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands.
"Ukraine has submitted its application against Russia to the ICJ," Zelenskyy said on Twitter. "Russia must be held accountable for manipulating the notion of genocide to justify aggression. We request an urgent decision ordering Russia to cease military activity now."
i24NEWS contributed to this report.
