A key spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry on Wednesday alleged that Israeli mercenaries were fighting alongside the far-right Azov Regiment in Ukraine, a statement which has now further fuelled tensions with Israel after Russia had last week suggested Adolf Hitler had ‘Jewish blood’.
‘Israeli mercenaries are practically shoulder to shoulder with Azov militants in Ukraine,’ Maria Zakharova told pro-Kremlin Sputnik radio in an interview which was monitored by Africa Daily News, New York.
It would be recalled that Azov rose to prominence in 2014, when its far-right activists took up arms against pro-Russian separatists who live in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region but have since fallen under the command of Ukraine’s military.
Africa Daily News, New York reports that they have been fighting alongside the Ukrainian army against Russian troops, which on February 24 launched a military campaign in the pro-Western country.
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Meanwhile, its members are part of the Ukrainian resistance in the port city of Mariupol, holed up inside the Azovstal steel plant against which Russian forces launched a major assault on Tuesday.
Africa Daily News, New York had last week reported the comments made by the Russian foreign affairs chief which many Isreali officials have now condemned in strong terms.
By that suggestion, it is suspected that Israelis are fighting alongside Azov — viewed by Russia as ‘fascists’ and ‘Nazis’ — Moscow is compounding tensions that started after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed on Sunday that Hitler had ‘Jewish blood’.
His remarks sparked outrage in Israel, which called the statement ‘unforgivable and outrageous’ and a ‘terrible historical error’.
Africa Daily News, New York had on Tuesday also reported that Russia’s foreign ministry had accused Israel of backing ‘the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv’.
It is believed that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is of Jewish descent.
