Russia’s foreign minister has made wild claims that Hitler had ‘Jewish blood’

Comments from Russia’s Foreign Minister about Adolf Hitler has caused outrage, with Jewish groups demanding an apology.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been slammed for suggesting Adolf Hitler may have ‘had Jewish blood’.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Israel has not actively supported or denounced either country. Minister Lavrov’s remarks to an Italian channel sparked a furious response from Israeli politicians.

Moscow has previously said it wants to “demilitarise” and “de-Nazify” Ukraine in its propaganda.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. Picture: AFP.

While speaking to Italian outlet Mediaset’s Rete 4 channel the Russian claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “puts forward an argument of what kind of Nazism can they have if he himself is Jewish”.

According to a transcript of the interview, he then added: “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood”.

The comments sparked a furious response from Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.

Laid condemned the remarks as “an unforgivable and outrageous statement as well as a terrible historical error”, in a statement from the foreign ministry.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been blasted for his comments. Picture: AFP.

“Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust,” he said.

“The lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves of antisemitism.”

The Russian Ambassador to Israel has been summoned for a “clarification meeting”, the statement added.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett also denounced Lavrov’s “lies” that he said effectively “accuse the Jews themselves of the most awful crimes in history”, perpetrated against themselves.

“No war in our time is like the Holocaust or is comparable to the Holocaust,” Bennett said in a statement. “The use of the Holocaust of the Jewish people as a political tool must cease immediately.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a tweet that Lavrov’s comments illustrate “deeply rooted antisemitism of the Russian elites”.

“They demonstrate that today’s Russia is full of hatred towards other nations,” he wrote.

– ‘Cruelly deranged’ –

The United States, which has led international support for Ukraine, called Kyiv “a valued partner” against antisemitism.

“To invoke the lie of ‘denazification’ in Ukraine, a country with a Jewish president and a significant Jewish population living in peace among their fellow citizens, is baseless and cruelly deranged,” the office of the State Department envoy on combating antisemitism wrote on Twitter.

“It is incumbent on the world to speak out against such vile, dangerous rhetoric and support our Ukrainian partners in the face of the Kremlin’s vicious assault,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted later.

In Berlin, German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told reporters: “I think the Russian propaganda being spread here by Foreign Minister Lavrov needs no comment — it’s absurd”.